My Salad Days
by Soleil2
Summary: A follow up to ATW2. Speculation with a healthy dose of angst and now a little hope. Complete.
1. Default Chapter

Title: My Salad Days  
  
Author name: Soleil  
  
Author Email: soliel9708@aol.com  
  
Disclaimer: I'm on unemployment. Nuff said. Title comes from Shakespeare's "Anthony and Cleopatra."  
  
Summary: Yes. Yet another reaction piece. Deals with the idea of suicide. Trying to even out the balance in the reactions a wee bit. Just a little because I can't stand both characters right now. :)  
  
Pairings: H/M sort of.  
  
Spoilers: Whopping huge ones for ATW2.  
  
Rating: PG-13 for concepts. Years ago, when I was a younger, when I still believed in fairy tale endings and Prince Charmings, I cast a mold in my head. The perfect man would fit it neatly, no chinks or cracks on his surface. He would swoop down from the heavens on a snow white horse and pull me onto his lap. Together, we would ride off into the sunset. I never actually got beyond the sunset. I couldn't imagine what a perfect life would be like, even at six.  
  
It's odd, I know to trust the words and not the actions of people. Odder still when it comes from someone with my background. When I was a little girl, I needed to believe my father's weepy apologies and drunken 'love yous.' They helped make sense of something that would never really make sense. I read once, years ago, in an introduction to psychology course, that children in abusive homes tend to try and side with the abuser. That came out wrong. What I mean is that they try to keep the peace with the abusive parent in order to protect themselves. It's amazing how parents can screw their children up.  
  
I'm no longer a child. And, as much as I would love to be able to do it, I can no longer blame my actions on my parents. No one has ever loved me the most. It hurts to say it as much as it does to realize it. It's a hard lesson to learn. Harder to learn that it's partially my fault. People have tried and I stopped them. He tried and I stopped him. I don't know why I do it.  
  
I never thanked him. Again, I don't know why. That same intro to psych textbook would probably say that I was pushing my boundaries. Trying to see how far I could push before he pushed back. I wish someone could tell me why I do it. Why I feel the need to test people's limits.  
  
I am Eve and Delilah, luring men to their downfalls. I am the Sirens, inviting sailors to crash and drown at my feet. I am Cleopatra; I am Jezebel; I am all the women that the world and literature love to hate. And I will never get to be the woman that someone loves best.  
  
I am tired. I am tired of being and more tired of being me. Chaos and pathos have swirled around me my whole life. I have lived in their vortices for so long that I don't know if I would ever be capable of living another way. Every once in a while, through my friends, I've gotten glimpses, peeks, at another life. I want the picket fences and two car garages. I want them badly, but I know now that I was not made for them.  
  
The little white pills before me are so seductive. They promise me what people cannot. An end to it all. One swallow and the chaos will stop. The winds will die down and the tornadoes will cease to swirl. I will stop hurting people if I just quietly disappear. I don't know if anyone will miss me. Actually, that's not true. I know they will. I'm not doing this to make people sorry. I don't want them to miss me. I want them to be happy. They could lead full lives once they realize how much better they are if I'm not sucking them down into an abyss.  
  
I'm not leaving a note. Just one call, hopefully to his answering machine. The recorded voice instructs me to leave a message. "I never thanked you," I say to the machine, "and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry you lost your job for me. So - thank you.. I love you."  
  
I can only hope God is more forgiving than I have been in my life. 


	2. Chapter 2

The telephone stopped ringing the exact second Harm found his keys. It figured. The whole day had been a wash. Literally. Apparently, whoever coined the expression "stick it where the sun don't shine" meant the East Coast and not some crude anatomical part. Dropping his umbrella in a wet heap on the floor, he headed into his kitchen for a much needed beer. His test flight had been cancelled due to the weather. After hours of pre- flight de-briefings, the good people of the Company had decided that they didn't want to risk a multi-million dollar aircraft and had sent him home.  
  
He was mildly disgusted with everything. The weather, the day, the fact that he was working for the CIA, and the state of his life. This was not how he pictured his return from Paraguay. He, at least, thought he was finally going to get the girl. Rolling his shoulders, he glanced at the answering machine. The little red light blinked ominously. More than anything, he didn't want to push the play button and he was half-tempted to ignore the message altogether in favor of his quiet apartment and his guitar. But a little nagging voice kept whispering quietly in his ear. It wanted to know how much worse the day could get and, before he knew it, he was pushing play.  
  
He nearly dropped his beer when Sarah Mackenzie's voice floated across his apartment. Even without the introduction and the sniffly quality of the voice, he knew it was her. The nagging voice exalted in its triumph.  
  
They had not parted on good terms. After days of stewing, he began to realize that maybe she had been right. Maybe not so much in her words, but in her actions, certainly. They probably wouldn't have worked out. Not in the long run. He would have been willing to try, but maybe she had saved them the inevitable heartbreaks. By being a complete bitch. Thousands of miles. He flew thousands of miles and didn't even get a fucking thank you for his efforts.  
  
He sighed as he realized that he had missed the whole message. Hitting rewind, he chastised himself to pay attention to it this time. "I never thanked you and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry you lost your job for me. So - thank you."  
  
"Well there you go. A few weeks too late to count," he told the answering machine. He heard the carefully measured pause and smirked. Sarah Mackenzie had a flair for the dramatic.  
  
"I love you."  
  
The bottle slid from his loose grasp and landed on the floor in a loud crash. For a full minute, he did nothing but stare at the answering machine as the glass filled puddle at his feet soaked his shoes. His hand was shaky as it hit rewind again.  
  
Had she just told him that she loved him over an answering machine? What kind of chicken shit stunt was that? Had she realized that he had almost freed himself from her sticky web and wanted to suck him back in?  
  
He grabbed the phone and dialed her number before he could rethink his actions. He had held his tongue in Paraguay, but he didn't think he could do it anymore. She was a vampire that preyed upon his emotions and he needed her to stop. He had nothing left to give her.  
  
Her machine answered. "Mac, I know you're there. Pick up. Pick up the damn phone now." He ground the words between his teeth and waited. When she didn't get on the phone, he clicked his phone off and dialed JAG.  
  
"Colonel Mackenzie's office," a chipper voice answered.  
  
"Bud," he said without preamble, "it's Harm."  
  
"Sir! It's good to hear from you. How are you?"  
  
"For the last time, call me Harm. I'm not in the Navy anymore, remember?"  
  
Bud answered in a more subdued voice. "Yes, sir. Harm. Yes, Harm. We sure miss you around here. Especially the Colonel. I don't think she's doing all that well." Bud's voice dropped to a near whisper as he relayed the last piece of information. The staff had been scurrying to cover for the Colonel, hiding her mistakes from the Admiral, but it was getting harder to do as time wore on and the list of problems grew.  
  
A small, mean part of him smiled. Serves her right, it hissed in his ear. "Listen, Bud, she's, ah, she's actually why I'm calling. Is she there?"  
  
"No, sir, she called out sick. Harriet went over to her apartment to bring her some soup this afternoon. She just got back; she said the Colonel didn't look so good." As an afterthought, he added, "And she was acting weird, too."  
  
"Acting weird?" Harm parroted. The small, mean part stopped smiling and vanished. "How weird?"  
  
"Harriet didn't say. She just said she was worried. I have to drop files off that need her signature on the way home. Do you want me to give her a message?"  
  
"No," he paused, "thanks, Bud. I'll try her at home. Take care and give my best to Harriet and AJ."  
  
He hung up and lowered the phone. He told himself he was being paranoid. She wouldn't do anything stupid. Cursing silently, he dialed her number again.  
  
The machine answered again. Just as he was about to hang up and head over to her apartment, a tired voice mumbled, "'Lo?"  
  
"Mac?"  
  
"Can't talk now. Sleepy."  
  
"Mac?" he called out again.  
  
"Go away. Just go away," the voice was cranky now. He heard a loud crash and assumed the receiver had fallen on the floor.  
  
Grabbing his cell phone, he dialed 911. As he head out of his apartment, he said words he never thought he'd say. "I think my friend tried to kill herself." 


	3. Chapter 3

It was, almost, like a scene from a Victorian novel. The handsome man waiting by the bedside of an obviously sick woman, his head bowed, hands clasped loosely between his knees. The woman lay still, pale even against the pale hospital sheets. In another time, another era, the scene might have been romantic. That is, until you looked closely at it. The hospital corridors were teeming with people. The human noise was minimal in comparison to the sounds of a functioning hospital. Machines beeped, doors buzzed open, nurses chatted, ambulances screamed in the distance. Patients were sitting on gurneys in the hallways.  
  
Or until you looked at the people themselves. Charcoal stained the woman's teeth and lips, turning them a dark unforgiving gray. It ringed her nostrils and smudged the corners of her mouth. An IV line formed a seam along the inside of her wrist and arm. Her lips, almost black, mumbled something incoherent, causing the man to jerk out of his stupor. He, too, did not fit the mold of a Victorian character. His jaw was set and his eyes, red from the fluorescent lighting, were hard. Emotions turned slow revolutions in his eyes. First anger, then guilt, then anger again, followed by concern. They were slowly blending, melding together, into misery, but the anger remained distinct.  
  
A nurse had encouraged him to talk to her. But he couldn't begin to know where to start. He hadn't known what to do or say since the moment he'd arrived at her apartment and saw the paramedics lifting her body onto a stretcher. There had been nothing in the apartment to indicate why she had done this. The super had let them in; he had even volunteered to clean up the mess. He liked the lady. That's what he told Harm and the paramedics. Always real nice, always kept to herself, but still nice, she didn't deserve this. And now the apartment looked like it did when she left it for work. There wasn't even a note.  
  
His fingers curled into a fist and slowly unclenched. He wasn't just angry with her. It bordered on furious. She was stronger than this.  
  
Her eyes drifted open and she said, "There's a present for Harriet on my dresser." She sighed. "I forgot to give it to her."  
  
"I'll get it for you."  
  
She blinked slowly and forced her eyes open. "Thank you."  
  
"You're welcome. Just rest, Sarah." His fingers stroked the back of her hand and he watched her eyes fight to stay open.  
  
"Don't tell Harm," she mumbled.  
  
His fingers stilled. "What?"  
  
"Don't tell Harm," she pleaded. "Please?"  
  
"Ssh, rest, Sarah."  
  
"It's a heart," she said on a long drawn out breath.  
  
"A heart," he repeated dumbly.  
  
"On my ankle. I put cover up on it before work." She lifted her right leg and gestured to her ankle. Looking at her leg, she sighed. "Oh, you can't see it." She turned her head to study him. "Because of the sheets," she explained.  
  
She lowered her leg and turned around on the gurney to face him. "That dress was so uncomfortable." Her voice had lowered a little, as if she was confiding something in him.  
  
"What dress, Sarah?" His thumb brushed over her forehead, pushing the bangs back from her eyes.  
  
"The one I wore to the nightclub. In Paraguay." Her voice was beginning to drowse and her eyes were losing the battle to stay open.  
  
He kept rubbing his hand over the crown of her skull, unsure of whom he was soothing, but needing the contact it provided. His bad day had spun rapidly into nightmarish and he was still half-convinced that, if he shut his eyes, he would wake up in his apartment, far from the hospital and far from her.  
  
Her hand clawed at the bed sheet before turning over in his and gripping his hand. They had been at the hospital for a while; he wasn't sure how long, but it looked like it was getting dark outside. The first part of the afternoon had been spent watching her throw up the charcoal the doctor's had forced into her stomach. As her body spasms diminished, the long, convoluted thoughts began. Her ramblings were exhausting him and he'd long since given up on trying to follow them. The doctors had assured him, as best as they could, that the treatment was slowly working and that the hallucinations weren't an indication of worsening conditions. They were simply a by-product of the drugs coursing through her system. As best at the doctors and paramedics could tell, she'd taken extremely strong over the counter painkillers and chased them with alcohol. He shuddered when he wondered how she knew that particular combination could produce these results. They'd known each other for years and still knew so little about each other.  
  
She was quieting down again, but he couldn't let himself relax. There were things he needed to do, he knew, but he couldn't gather his thoughts long enough to remember what they were. The cell phone vibrating against his hip startled him. Casting a glance at her, he slipped quietly out of the emergency room and out of the hospital. The sun was setting and a waiting ambulance's lights bounced off the hospital's walls. And for the first that evening, he allowed himself to breathe deeply.  
  
"Rabb," he answered the phone.  
  
"Comman - Harm. It's Bud, Sir."  
  
He rubbed his forehead and cursed silently. This was one of the things he had forgotten. "Yes, Bud?"  
  
"Sir, I'm at Colonel Mackenzie's apartment and there's no one here." Bud's voice sounded confused.  
  
"I know that, Bud. I'm sorry, I forgot to call you."  
  
"She's with you?" His question had a hopeful lilt.  
  
"Yes, but-"  
  
"Well, I guess I'll just give her these files tomorrow. I'm sorry to interrupt."  
  
"Bud," he said quietly, "I'm at the hospital at Georgetown."  
  
There was a long silence. "Is everything okay?"  
  
He sighed heavily. "No. Everything is most definitely not okay."  
  
He had drifted off. When he woke up, he saw the Admiral sitting in a chair across from him. Over her abdomen, their eyes met. He resisted the urge to snap to attention and reminded himself that he was no longer in the Navy. "Sir," he acknowledged.  
  
"Hell, Harm. Call me AJ." The older man shifted forward in his seat and scrubbed his hands over his face.  
  
"AJ." He nodded. His eyes drifted up her torso to her face. She was still sleeping, her fingers were still curled in his.  
  
"What the hell happened?" The Admiral's tone was gruff.  
  
He shrugged. The gesture wasn't meant to be insolent, but the emotion was implied. "I don't know. They couldn't find a note." He looked back at the other man. "How long have you been here?"  
  
"About a half hour. She's been asleep the whole time." The Admiral leaned back against the chair and ran a hand across his mouth. He mumbled something like "What a mess." That part was clear enough and Harm would never be sure whether it was his imagination or the admiral's voice that added the "I made."  
  
He glanced up at Harm. "I never saw this coming." He patted Mac's other hand. "She didn't seem depressed."  
  
A doctor pulled back the curtain warding the trio from the rest of the ER. "We're going to have to take her for some tests now," she told the men.  
  
"Tests?" They echoed the doctor in stereo.  
  
"Just a precaution." The corners of her mouth tilted up in a tired, sympathetic smile. She had been hoping that the woman had been alone so she could escape without answering questions. It wasn't that she didn't want to help. It was just that she'd been on duty for twenty hours and she desperately wanted to go to sleep. "Just to make sure that there isn't any damage to any of her organs."  
  
"She's going to be okay?" The younger man asked.  
  
The doctor flipped through her medical charts. "We're going to run some more blood tests too." She told them. "But physically, without the results from the other tests, yes, it looks like she's going to be okay."  
  
"I don't understand." The older man turned to his friend. "Was this just an attempt to get attention?"  
  
His question made the doctor pause. "Sir, I don't know your friend. And I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I will say this." She drew a deep breath. "Just because it doesn't kill you, a non-fatal heart attack is still a heart attack."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
She could tell the older man's temper was short and she weighed her next words carefully. "I mean, sir, just because she didn't succeed doesn't mean she didn't mean it. Don't blow this off as a bid for attention or a cry for help." She gestured to the orderlies to wheel the woman off. "This is still serious." She started to follow the gurney.  
  
Pausing at the elevator doors, she turned around. "We'll put her in a room after this. Someone will let you know where she is." She smiled again, this time the edges of her mouth her a little tenser. She tried to make it a little more sympathetic. They couldn't know, she reasoned with herself, that the roughest terrain was still ahead.  
  
The men stood next to each other as the elevator's doors slid shut. They waited for a minute and walked away. In separate directions. 


	4. Chapter 4

It seemed wrong that the weather was so beautiful. The room faced east and she had been watching the sun rise until it formed a blinding glare on the window panes. Her fingers folded, unfolded, refolded the ugly hospital gown. The pale blue fabric fanned over her stomach in undulating patterns. Because they were the only part of her that moved, the movements, even though they were slight, seemed grotesque against her still body.  
  
She was alone for the moment. The doctors had finally convinced him to go home. He'd been standing sentinel by her bedside since they had admitted her into the hospital. After the first few hours, he'd given up the idea of making her talk and had contented himself with staring at her.  
  
Shifting her legs beneath the blankets, she released a small puff of air. She hadn't expected to have to re-evaluate her life. Waking up in the middle of the night had been an unwelcome surprise. Waking up to find the Admiral and Harm flanking her like the lions in Trafalgar Square was worse. She shouldn't have called him. That was where she had screwed up. She should have known that despite everything that they had been through, he would swoop in and rescue her from herself. He'd been doing it for eight years and she supposed old habits were hard to break. Even when - her mind stopped at that thought.  
  
A chair's legs scraped against the linoleum by her bed. She didn't have to turn her head to know it was Harm. She blinked against the sudden lack of sunlight. Bright blue and purple spots obscured her view of his face for a minute. He was dressed in a suit, elbows on knees, chin resting against steepled fingertips. He didn't smiled, didn't speak for a minute, just studied her face.  
  
"I might not be able to get away with this," he said after a few minutes. "But the Admiral and I agreed."  
  
"You." The word caught in her mouth and she cleared her throat to try again. "You talked to the Admiral?"  
  
He nodded. "He's granting you leave while you get therapy. You can go through a private doctor and we'll try to keep this as quiet as possible."  
  
"You can't force me into therapy," she said mildly.  
  
"You tried to kill yourself." The words were said quietly but she could hear the anger behind them. Her fingers curled around the gown again, bunching it in her fists, before clawing at the blanket and pulling it up to neck. "Therapy seems like a reasonable step to me."  
  
She sighed a little and looked away again. He put a finger under her chin and turned her head to face him. "You're going to get help, Mac. You have three choices. You can stay in the hospital-"  
  
"No," she said quickly.  
  
"You can get help from a private psychologist and stay with one of us." He waited to see her reaction. "Or we transfer you to Bethesda and the doctors there will treat you."  
  
"You can't transfer me."  
  
He took a deep breath. "I'll go to court, Mac. I'll bring in the doctors who were here last night and I'll petition the courts. I'll try my damnedest to get an order to show cause to have this done immediately."  
  
He waited a minute. From his raised eyebrows, she guessed that he was expecting a reaction from her. For a minute, something flared up and railed against the bullying tactics. But it died just as quickly as it appeared. Exhaling slowly, she said, "You can't do that."  
  
"Yes. I can. I may not succeed, but I can certainly try. And I can do it loudly."  
  
"That's blackmail."  
  
"You tried to kill yourself," he bit the words off in hard syllables. "You have no leverage in this." He pushed the chair back as he stood up. In an awkward gesture of affection, he patted her shoulder. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't care. Call me when they release you and I'll pick you up."  
  
Halfway across the room, he turned back to face her. "I have the name of a psychiatrist. Someone recommended her. He said she was very good. I'll make the appointment for you." His mouth tilted up at the corners. "Try to get some rest, Sarah. I'll be back later this afternoon to check up on you."  
  
She waited until he left the room before she started to cry. It had seemed like such an easy solution to her problems before. And now, now her life was more of a mess than it had ever been. Hiccupping, she closed her eyes and prayed for sleep. 


	5. Chapter 5

Dr. Audrey Hepburn, her name an unfortunate accident resulting from a star- struck mother and the bad luck to fall in love with Walter Hepburn, studied the woman in front of her. She was getting plenty of time to complete her study. Sarah Mackenzie didn't speak unless spoken to, didn't make eye contact, and, from the looks of it, didn't eat much. She was sullen, uncommunicative, and prone to one-syllable answers.  
  
She repressed the sigh that wanted to force its way out of her throat. She had told Sarah's friend - she checked her notes - Harm that this wouldn't be a miracle cure. A person did not appear in therapy one day and emerge magically better. It was a complex cocktail of sessions and, in cases like Sarah's, the right drugs. She did agree with his assessment that Sarah needed it. The suicide attempt alone demanded it. But Sarah had to want help in order to receive it and it appeared that she didn't realize that she wanted to be helped yet.  
  
"Sarah," she prompted. They only had fifteen more minutes left in their session and she wanted an answer to her original question. "You never answered me. How are you feeling?"  
  
"Fine." She rubbed her hands down her arms and looked around the office. She pulled the corners of her mouth up in what passed as an imitation of a smile. "You have a lovely office."  
  
"How's your mood been today?" She ignored the attempt to dodge the question, but she could have laid even money on the answer.  
  
"Fine."  
  
Audrey tapped her fingers against the side of her desk. Leaning forward and resting her chin on her palm, she said, "Your friends don't think you're fine. They're worried about you."  
  
"I'm okay," she murmured.  
  
Audrey shook her head. "Why do you think you're okay?"  
  
The other woman looked up. "I've been in difficult spots before." Her lips trembled into a smile. "I'll survive."  
  
"Sarah," Audrey said firmly, "you very nearly didn't survive this."  
  
"And yet, here I am." Sarah shrugged her shoulders and studied the woman's office. "You have a lovely office," she said again.  
  
"Thank you." Audrey followed the path of Sarah's eyes. "Most of it I picked up while traveling." She flicked her gaze back. "Do you like to travel?"  
  
"I don't get the chance to very often." She knitted her fingers together tightly in her lap. Audrey could see the knuckles turning white from the pressure of the grip. "Work. I travel for work."  
  
"Do you enjoy it?"  
  
"Work? I guess. It's a job." She hitched a shoulder a little. "If it were fun, it'd be called play."  
  
Audrey had already talked to a few of Sarah's co-workers, unofficially. She needed a control group because she knew Sarah's viewpoints were likely skewed by her emotions. Although there was a fair amount of the usual office grumbling, everyone had been unanimous in the unique atmosphere. She heard the word family mentioned often during the interviews.  
  
Sarah's response, despite the contrasting stories she heard earlier, didn't surprise her. Often, people who attempted suicide developed a type of tunnel vision approach to their lives. Combined with a sense of isolation, they lacked the ability to see the fuller picture. She thought that Sarah had simply lost the ability to see that people cared about her.  
  
"What about your co-workers?"  
  
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and chewed on it. "They're nice." She glanced away. "I like them."  
  
"They said the same about you."  
  
"I know." The words shuddered out.  
  
"Do you really?" Audrey leaned against the side of her chair and rested her elbow on its arm.  
  
"Yeah." Her voice was small. "I do." She paused. "It's getting late. Can I go home now?"  
  
"Do you have someone to take you home?"  
  
Sarah jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the door. "My frie - uh - Harm." She stuttered the beginning of his name. "He's set up residency in my apartment."  
  
"It's better for you to have people around." Audrey had explained that same principle to Sarah's friends. Sarah couldn't be left alone. Not because of the risk of another attempt, although that played a role in the decision, but because many people who tried to killed themselves were isolated or felt that way. She needed the contact with the outside world that another person would provide. She simply could not be left alone with the demons in her mind. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"  
  
She walked the other woman to the ante-room. The man, Harm, stood up when they entered. Sarah didn't look at him and he didn't take his hands out of his pockets. He looked puzzled, as if he had yet to figure out how he had arrived at the office. Audrey understood his frustration and she could only hope that Sarah would be able to see his concern, but if body language was any indication, a major source of Sarah's problems stemmed from the tension flowing between them.  
  
******  
  
Her apartment was getting dark but she didn't want to turn any lights on. Her hands were wrapped tightly around her mug of tea she stared out the window. It had taken some convincing but she was finally alone. He'd been reluctant to go and for that she was grateful. She was just tired of being watched.  
  
Everyone was watching her. Her doctor, her CO, her friends. Harm. It was the first moment alone since she'd been released from the hospital. It was temporary, Harm was picking up Chinese take-out, but she relished it. Her stomach growled in protest at the thought of food. She hadn't eaten much in the past few days. Weeks, really, if she were honest with herself.  
  
Her fingertips pressed against the window sash. The glass was cool beneath them. She imagined the coolness spreading through her hands, radiating up her arms and down her bones until she was as cool, as calm, and as invisible as the glass. Her forehead leaned against the panes and she watched the world below her.  
  
Often, during the course of their time together, she wondered why Harm felt compelled to fly. But now, she wanted to experience the freedom. She wanted to feel the rush of the wind against her face. Wanted to be able to spread her arms and feel those few precious minutes when all there was the air, the wind, and the sky.  
  
An arm wrapped around her waist and yanked her back from the window. Off- balance, she tumbled to the ground, taking the body attached to the arm down with her. Almost objectively, she noticed the broken mug on the floor and the half-open window. Had she done that?  
  
From their position on the floor, Harm soothed her hair back from her forehead. "Mac, what are you doing?" He kissed the crown of her head. She wondered if he knew that he was doing it.  
  
"I don't know," she said, studying the mess under the window. "I didn't know I did that."  
  
His arm tightened around her waist. "Why are you doing this?"  
  
"I don't know. I'm sorry," she cried. "I'm so sorry."  
  
"Don't be sorry," he murmured into her hair. "Get better, please, Sarah."  
  
She nodded slowly. The tears gathering in her eyes spilled over onto her cheeks. She buried her face into her hands and mumbled, "I'm sorry," into them repeatedly. 


	6. Chapter 6

Mac's bedroom door was closed. She had gone into her room, mumbling something about needing a nap after her session, and pushed the door closed behind her. The car ride back had been silent. The journey from the car to her apartment had been silent, too. She hadn't looked at him either. She sat or stood with her face angled away from him and her arms wrapped tightly beneath her ribs. He hadn't realized how much he could miss a voice.  
  
Two weeks before she tried to kill herself, he had decided that he was okay, that his life was okay, without her. He'd even told his new partner that it had been time for him to move on. They hadn't been friends, best or otherwise, in a while. They'd been reduced to co-workers, sparring partners, and, on occasion, co-counsel, although that was increasingly rarer. The degeneration from friends to casual acquaintances had been slow. Little things, not so little fights, had eaten away at the bones of the friendship until it was a brittle shell. It had almost been a relief to cast it aside.  
  
Or, at least, that's what he had told himself. It was harder to lie to himself when he had set up camp in her apartment. He dragged his fingers down his face, stretching the skin beneath them into a warped mask of his face. This would definitely qualify as a mess. He couldn't really remember a bigger one.  
  
Trust Sarah Mackenzie to throw everything into a tailspin. She was, without question or doubt, the unstable air mass in his life. His life was gaining some semblance of normalcy. He had a decent job that gave him the chance to fly and provided him with the adrenaline rush to which he'd grown accustomed. It was far a field from the life he'd imagined as a little boy. There were no more carriers, no more flight decks, and the courtroom battles had been silenced. But he was growing used to revamping his plans. He thought he was adjusting nicely this time around.  
  
And then she called. Her voice had been shaky and tired. It still sang in his ears, weeks after it had been erased from his answering machine. He could recall it with perfect clarity; her slight exhalation and the way the resigned "I love you" whispered out into his apartment, louder than any scream. Anger and concern warred for supremacy in his emotions. He was angry at her for trying something so unbelievably stupid, so incredibly selfish. When he saw her lying on the gurney, her face pale and sweaty, the paramedics hovering over her, he tried to tell himself that it was just an attempt. That she hadn't been serious and it was just an attention getting technique. A horribly cruel one, but effective. The doctors had disabused him of that notion. They had loaded him down with pamphlets, websites, and fact sheets. It was a shame he was no longer practicing law, he could almost call himself to the stand as an expert witness in this area now.  
  
He didn't know how to help her. He felt powerless watching her struggle with something that he couldn't begin to understand, mostly because she wouldn't let him try. The day he'd come back to her apartment, arms loaded down with Chinese food, to find her leaning halfway out the window, he just reacted. The sight of her balanced precariously against the window ledge had scared him. He had cherished hopes that she' been getting better. It hurt him to realize that he had only been seeing what both she and he wanted him to see.  
  
She never explained what prompted her to apologize. Her broken sorrys echoed in his memories. God, he wanted a drink. A long, slow pull of whiskey or bourbon and a puff on a strong cigar. He was so tired of this. He wanted to run for the hills and never look back. How easy would it been to just walk away from this mess? To leave Sarah behind and never go back to find her? He could call Catherine and ask her out to dinner. He could call Beth and see if she wanted to go out someplace, any place but here. He could do something that would let him spend the night far away from this apartment. And his mind, he knew, would never leave this room.  
  
He pushed himself up off the couch and hesitated outside her bedroom door. He wanted to make sure she was sleeping and not just avoiding him. The information on the websites and booklets that the doctors had given him said that he should talk to her about her experience. Obviously, the people who conducted the studies did not conduct them on stubborn Marines.  
  
She wouldn't talk to him. Oh, she'd speak to him. She'd ask him about his work, the CIA, and his family. It was perpetual small talk, never reaching the underlying problems. Turnabout, he supposed, was fair play. He'd kept his fair share of secrets from her, too. It was a hell of a game to play, though, when her life was on the line.  
  
He took a risk and turned the knob on her bedroom door. The quilts and blankets piled on her bed cocooned her form from view. Only the top of her head was visible. Her soft, even inhalations and exhalations filled the room. After eight years as her partner, he knew she was really asleep, not just hiding from him. She never could pull off the fake sleep.  
  
He pulled the door shut quietly and went back to his spot on the couch. There was another test flight scheduled for next week and he wasn't sure how long he'd be gone. At least overnight. The thought worried him more than it had before. He needed someone to stay with her. He had systematically eliminated all of their friends, except for Sturgis. After weighing the pros and cons, he had been tempted to call him but stopped short of actually dialing the number. With Mac on leave and his resignation, Sturgis' caseload was probably huge. He didn't need the added burden of Mac's problems and Mac deserved better care than he could give her. He had considered the Admiral, but rejected him, too. Personal reasons more guided that decision than practical ones.  
  
Briefly, he considered Webb, but rejected that idea as quickly as it came. As much as the guy bothered him, he'd be willing to set aside personal differences if it meant Mac would get better. But, he didn't think Webb knew about this. He hadn't asked and she hadn't said, but he'd gotten the impression that Clay wasn't a factor in her life. It made him wonder about what he'd seen in Paraguay and in the hospital. Regardless of what did or didn't happen between them, Webb's absence, at the hospital and at her apartment, told him what he needed to know. He couldn't call him.  
  
More than she needed company, he wanted to be certain that she would be okay while he was gone. They both needed to know that someone who cared whether she got better watched over her. He didn't know to where she'd disappeared, but he wanted his Mac back. He wanted the woman who trekked across forests to find a truck; the woman who wore flowered skirts and rode along beside him in the back of a Gypsy caravan. She was the woman he had fallen in love with. The woman sleeping soundly behind that bedroom door was her shell. She didn't fight with him; she acquiesced when he acted overbearing. She ate when he cooked, watched TV if he had it on, read if he handed her a book. She was lost. She was trapped somewhere and it was time for him to find her. She'd found him in the middle of the ocean once. He could certainly find her when she was only a few feet away from him. He'd done it before over greater distances.  
  
He knew whom he could call. The only person in the world, other than the woman he was trying to help, he'd want if he were hurting. Sighing, he cast a glance at her closed bedroom door. When she got better, she was going to kill him. On the bright side, it might anger her enough to pull her out of her stupor. Maybe one day, when she was old and feeble minded and her swing didn't pack as much of a punch, she'd even thank him. He was going to relish that day. If, on that day far in the future, when he had great- grandchildren running around the house, his bones will let him, he has a dance of victory already planned. Picking up the phone, he dialed and waited for the phone to ring.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hi, Mom?" 


	7. Chapter 7

The voices whispered in the dark. They hissed in the corners of her mind. They were armed with claws and she could feel them pinching and pulling at her, tugging her back into the dark. She was so tired of fighting them. She was so tired of telling herself that they didn't matter, that she was better than them.  
  
She didn't have any weapons left to fight them. She had used them all and the voices were still there. It was time to acknowledge that they were stronger than she was.  
  
It wasn't just her father's voice or Chris's voice, either. It was a full chorus of voices, blended together in discord, telling her it wasn't enough. That she wasn't enough. She would never be good enough; she would never be smart enough; and she would never be able to quiet them.  
  
Her opinion of the quiet had changed. If it could drown out the sounds of her demons, she wanted noise. She left the radio playing in her bedroom, the television on in the living room. During the day, while Harm was at work and she was waiting for her appointment with Dr. Hepburn, her apartment was a barrage of noise. It poured from the doorways and spilled into the apartment's central rooms.  
  
And still, the voices were louder. She didn't know how to clear them. She slept, pulling the covers over her ears. She read. She ran. And the voices would not go away.  
  
Every once in a while, she was tempted to tell Harm about them. Her mouth would open and the words would be there, waiting to be formed, and she would lack the air to push them out. She couldn't bring herself to say the words. Contrarily, she found herself wanting to ask him questions, wanting the answers in order to restock her arsenal against the voices. She wanted the reinforcements without having to explain why she needed them. So she tried to stay silent. Twice, she bit her lip to keep herself from blurting the questions out like an insecure teenaged girl asks, "Do you think I'm pretty?" It was an odd position to be in. To want to talk and not be able to, to not want to ask for reassurance and be powerless to do almost anything else.  
  
Instead, she found herself chattering inconsequentially, talking about the weather, how much she loved this time of year, asking about his job, and his family. Her jaw ached from the fake smiles and the constant pressure of trying to maintain a calm façade. She suspected that he probably missed the days when she didn't talk at all.  
  
One night, over dinner, he interrupted her babbling. She nearly cried from relief. Shut me up, she wanted to scream. Make it quiet again. Make the noises stop. But he didn't, because he didn't know they were there. He couldn't know because she couldn't tell him.  
  
"Mac," he said. He sounded nervous and she raised an eyebrow. "I have to leave tomorrow."  
  
"Oh." She lowered her fork to her plate. "Of course. You have things you need to do. You can't just spend the rest of your life here." She pushed herself back from the table and began to clear the plates. "You didn't have to stay this long. I appreciate it, but you know you didn't have to stay, Harm." She smiled to let him know that she was okay with his going. "Do you need help packing?" The hand holding the plate shook lightly as the demons danced in her head.  
  
"No, Mac--"  
  
"Oh." It shouldn't have hurt. This had been her goal since that night in the hotel in Paraguay. "Okay. Well, I'll just start clearing up then. You can start packing. You made dinner, you don't need to help with the clean up." She set her plate down when the tremors wouldn't stop, drew a deep breath, and decided to start over again.  
  
"That's not what I meant." He moved his napkin from his lap to the table and made an ineffectual grab for her wrist, but she was a flurry of movement. "Mac, please sit down."  
  
She sat. Her lips trembled open and closed again. "Okay, I'm sitting." She gestured to the chair beneath her.  
  
"I have to go away for work," he started to clarify.  
  
"How long - no, never mind. You probably can't say. Where are." Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. "I know better. I'm sorry."  
  
"It's okay." He clapped a hand down on hers to stop her fingers from tapping against the table top and squeezed her fingers lightly. "The point is, I don't know how long I'll be gone."  
  
"Harm," her voice was calmer, soothing, "I'll be fine."  
  
"I know. Because," he paused, sucking in air to give himself time and courage. "You won't be alone," he said in a whoosh, running the words together.  
  
"I don't understand," she said, her eyebrows sinking low on her forehead.  
  
"You won't be alone," he repeated.  
  
"But you won't be here," she pointed out. "You'll be in some exotic locale."  
  
"Yes, but - "  
  
"And Harriet and Bud have AJ and the baby. And the Admiral and Sturgis are busy. And you won't be here."  
  
"No." He wanted to scoot his chair back into the safety of the kitchen. "But my mother will be."  
  
"Your mother." She wondered if she heard him correctly.  
  
"Her plane lands in an hour. We're going to have to leave soon to pick her up."  
  
Her fingers curled around her glass. She wanted to throw it. She wanted to give into her childish urge and have a temper tantrum. "I'm not a child," she said slowly. "I don't need a babysitter."  
  
"I know that, Mac."  
  
"Obviously, you don't."  
  
"Yes," he said calmly, "I do."  
  
"Then tell your mother not to come." Her tone was almost pleading.  
  
"It's a little late for that. She'll be her in," he checked his watch, "fifty-six minutes. Get your shoes, we have to go." He stood up and took the stack of plates away from her.  
  
"Don't handle me," she snarled the words out.  
  
"I'm not." He dumped the plates in the sink. "Get your shoes."  
  
The muscles in her arm bunched and tightened as she lifted the glass slightly. Realizing what she was about to do, she lowered it and pulled her hand into her lap. "I don't need a babysitter," she repeated, pouting.  
  
He turned back to face her. "I know." At her skeptical look, he repeated, "I know."  
  
"Then why fly your mother out here?"  
  
"Because." He shrugged. "Because I trust her."  
  
"Harm," she began.  
  
"Mac," he cut her off. Kneeling before her, he said, "I need to concentrate on my job."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I can't do that if I'm worried about you." He tugged her hands and hauled her to her feet. "You'll be okay with my mom."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"That's it?" he asked.  
  
"We're going to be late." She avoided his question. Watching him move about her apartment, she wanted to ask him why he cared. She had done everything she could to make him leave and he still wouldn't go. Nothing worked. It was no damn good, but she didn't know what she could do to make him see that. She was a black hole and it was only a matter of time before one of two things happened. He would see her one day. One day, he would look at her and see beyond the woman and into the abyss and he would run. Or he would never see it and he would stumble into it and die. 


	8. Chapter 8

Walking down the concourse of Dulles International Airport, Trish Burnett was confused. Not by the airport or where to go, but by what she was doing in the airport. She had been puzzled ever since Harm's phone call. It had been a week since he called and during that week, aside from making travel plans and provisions for the gallery, resentment had begun to build. Not for Harm, but for the woman who had caused her son so much pain. It had been simmering beneath the surface, she was sure, since Harm had told her that he'd resigned from the Navy to find her and had come back without her and with a broken heart.  
  
He'd never told her exactly what had happened. He'd categorized under the broad catchall of "it's classified," but he'd said enough to let her know that he was unhappy. Logically, she knew that she only had one side of the story, but she felt she was entitled to be biased. He was, after all, her son.  
  
Although they had only met a handful of times during the course of Harm and Mac's partnership, Trish had always liked Sarah Mackenzie. Despite the weight of that precedence, the woman striding through the terminal was prepared to dislike her time in Washington, D.C.. She was here as a favor to her son and that was it. And she wasn't quite certain why Harm had thought she'd be the best person for the job. Didn't Mac have friends? Friends other than her son, who could watch over her and let Harm move on to a happier, healthier life? Apparently not. So here she was, in Washington, getting ready to babysit a woman in her thirties that she couldn't bring herself to like anymore.  
  
It was easy to find her son. Even if the crowd hadn't been thin because of the late hour, he would have stood out. Not just because of his height. There was an air about him. An indefinable air that commanded people to take notice of him. He'd had it all his life as had his father. She looked around the waiting area to see if he'd brought Mac with him, but couldn't see her. Stretching her arm out in front of her, she cried out, "Harm, darling." She reached up to hug her son. "It's good to see you."  
  
"Hi, Mom." He returned the embrace before pulling away. "How was your flight?" He reached out to take her carry-on and started to guide her to the baggage claim area.  
  
"Long." She grimaced a little and put her hand against her stomach. "And bumpy. We hit turbulence somewhere around the middle of the country."  
  
He pulled his face into a sympathetic expression. "I'm sorry. Listen, Mom, thank you so much for coming out here. I really appreciate it."  
  
"And how does Mac feel about it?" Trish asked.  
  
He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "She, uh." he stuttered, unsure how to tell his mother about Mac's reaction.  
  
"She doesn't appreciate it, I take it?"  
  
"She thinks I think she needs a babysitter."  
  
"Well, Harm, honestly, how did you think this would be interpreted?" She ran a hand through her hair, frowning when it caught on tangles from her trip. She glanced around the airport again, exaggerating her movements so he would be sure to take notice of what she was doing. "I'm surprised you didn't make her come along."  
  
"She's, uh, she's waiting at the baggage claim."  
  
"Harm," she sighed.  
  
Misinterpreting her sigh, he said defensively, "I didn't make her wait there. She wouldn't come up here. She said we needed time alone."  
  
"Harm," she said patiently, "she's a grown woman. She doesn't need someone to watch her every minute of the day."  
  
"I know that." When she only looked at him, he said, "I do." He sighed as they arrived at the baggage claim area. He stopped walking. "She's not doing well. I need to know that someone I trust is taking care of her."  
  
Trish raised a hand to his face and ran her thumb over his cheek, something she hadn't done since he was a boy and needed comfort. "I'm flattered that you asked, but I really don't see how I can help."  
  
He set her bag down and walked over to the monitors to find Trish's flight number. When he came back, he stuffed his hands into his jeans' pockets. "I guess," he shrugged, "I thought she could use a mother."  
  
Trish smiled at him. She couldn't help it. He looked so uncomfortable and awkward, a look she wasn't used to seeing on him. It reminded her of the way he acted as a little boy when he thought she was unhappy with him. Truthfully, she was unhappy. Not with him, but with the situation, with Mac for causing it, and with herself for being unable to be more sympathetic. "I'm your mother," she reminded him, "not Mac's."  
  
"I know." He flashed her a grin. "But you're a very good mom and who the hell knows where hers is."  
  
Trish let out a resigned sigh and picked up her bags. "Let's get Mac and my luggage."  
  
Mac was sitting by herself. Had she been standing with the throngs of passengers, she still would have looked lonely. Her head was angled away from them and the crowds, so Trish couldn't see her face. But she could see the rest of her. During the few times that they had met, she'd always walked away with the image of a pulled together and confidant woman. She had been lovely, and she probably still was, but the woman leaning against the low silver railings surrounding the baggage carousel looked nothing like the woman Trish remembered. She looked smaller and, somehow, crumpled. Her entire body seemed to have collapsed in on itself, giving the impression that the only thing keeping her from sinking under the weight of gravity was the small silver rail.  
  
"I told you it was bad," Harm said in a low voice.  
  
"I had no idea." Trish looked at her son. "No idea at all." The resentment began to lessen, but the tension it caused remained. She cast a quick prayer heavenward that her son would survive this, even if Sarah Mackenzie did not. 


	9. Chapter 9

Trish stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment studying Mac. As usual, Mac was either ignoring Trish's blatant staring or oblivious to it. Her television was on but Trish was willing to bet her gallery that Mac didn't know what she watching. Harm had been gone for two days and Trish dearly hoped that he was not expecting a miracle cure from his mother. Mac had been perfectly polite, even friendly, but Trish couldn't seem to find her. It seemed like the real Sarah, the one she'd first met, was gone, trapped somewhere in the other woman's body, and Trish didn't know how to get her back.  
  
One thing was certain, she couldn't stay in the apartment another day without a break. If she felt that way after only a few days, then Mac most definitely had to feel the same. Walking over to the couch, she patted Mac's feet to make her scoot over and perched her body on the edge of the cushion. "What are you watching?"  
  
"A cooking show," Mac answered vaguely. On the screen, the host moved about a large, bright kitchen and chattered about chicken stock.  
  
Good thing no one had been around to take her up on the bet, Trish thought. "My mother used to think all the world's ills could be solved through food," she said after a minute.  
  
Mac continued to watch the television, her features not giving any indication that she'd heard Trish until she spoke up, "My mother didn't like to cook much."  
  
"Mine thought every problem was fixable with the right food." Trish arched an eyebrow and emphasized, "Every problem. Broken hearts, I believe, called for something sweet. When I was feeling insecure, I got mashed potatoes or some other type of starch to fortify myself, I guess." She looked down at her lap and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "When Harm's father was shot down," she continued quietly, "I was plied with casseroles. I didn't have to cook for months."  
  
Mac nodded and fiddled with the edges of the afghan on her lap. Her dark hair fell into her eyes and Trish reached out a hand to brush it back. The move startled both women and Trish gave Mac a half-smile. "I've always hated cooking," she confessed. "Probably because my mother tried so hard to teach me when I was a teenager."  
  
"I'm not really much good in the kitchen, either."  
  
Trish knew this already. Over the years, she'd listened to Harm ramble about his dinner plans and what he was making for the two of them. Once, when she'd asked him why Mac never seemed to host their dinners, Harm made a comment about her kitchen being more for decoration purposes than actual use. "So, why are you watching this?" She waved a hand in the general direction of the television set.  
  
"I don't know." Mac shrugged her shoulders and watched the chef slice vegetables. "It seemed less - less boring than anything else."  
  
Sensing the opening she wanted, Trish watched the chef slide the vegetables into a pot on a stove before asking, "What time do you have to be at Dr. Hepburn's today?"  
  
"Two o'clock, why?"  
  
"Let's go out. I haven't been a tourist in the area in a long time."  
  
Mac concentrated on folding the edges of the blanket into precise rows. "You need the fresh air," Trish cajoled. "Come on."  
  
"I-"  
  
"Mac," Trish interrupted firmly, "you need to get out. You can't stay in here all day long."  
  
"I do."  
  
"No. The doctor does not count."  
  
"But.." Her objection trailed off and she stood up. "I need to change."  
  
"I'll wait." Trish picked up a magazine and started to flip through it. She looked up when Mac didn't move. Hovering in the hallway leading to the bedroom, the younger woman bit her lip and shifted her weight. "What, dear?"  
  
"Can I-" She cleared her throat. "Can I ask you something?"  
  
"Of course, what?"  
  
"What do you," she flushed, "what do you see when you look at me?"  
  
Caught off guard, Trish didn't know how to answer her question. She had a feeling that her answer was important and mattered to Mac. Her mind flipped through a catalogue of acceptable answers before settling on the truth. "I see," she said at length, unsure of how to phrase her words, "a lovely woman who just lost her way for a little bit." She tilted her head and frowned a little. "Why? What do you think I should see?"  
  
Mac tugged on the bottom of her sweater. "Nothing," she mumbled.  
  
Trish's frown deepened. She didn't think Mac was evading her question. She was almost positive that that was what Mac expected her to see. "Mac - Sarah?" she asked softly.  
  
Mac shook her head and raised a hand. "No. I'm sorry," she said. "Never mind. It was stupid." She nodded in the direction of her bedroom. "I'll go get changed and we can go."  
  
"No." Trish's voice was firm. "Sit back down and tell me what you meant." She patted the cushion and arched an eyebrow. "You maybe a Marine, dear, but I'm a mother. I outrank you."  
  
Mac's lower lip and chin trembled as she exhaled loudly. She shook her head again and didn't move, her hand still pulling on the hem of her sweater.  
  
Walking over to her, Trish put an arm around her shoulders and guided her to the couch. "You're not nothing," she said gently. She rested her cheek briefly against Mac's head. "I'm sorry that someone ever gave you that impression." She felt Mac's head nod against her shoulder and commented, "It's amazing what sticks with you from your childhood."  
  
Mac straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. "I forgave my parents a long time ago." She ran her fingers through her hair. "This mess is all me."  
  
"Is it?"  
  
"Well, who else would be to blame?" Mac demanded.  
  
"Sarah, my son is almost forty-years old. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck." She brushed a hand over Sarah's hair. "You don't just suddenly start to think less of yourself one day. Someone treated you badly and at a very young age."  
  
"I just said that I've forgiven them."  
  
"Forgiving isn't the same thing as conquering the hurt it caused or even, sometimes, getting over it." She smiled. "Look at my hatred of cooking."  
  
Mac let out a small laugh that ended in a sigh. She sniffled softly and pulled a pillow onto her lap. "When my father died," she said after a beat, "I got, um, I arrived at the hospice too late to talk to him. The priest, he said that my father told him that he was proud of me."  
  
"Well, why wouldn't he be? Look at you and how far you've come."  
  
"He never told me. He would say he loved me sometimes. When he was on one of his binges and I was little. When I got older, though, he never said anything kind. If he didn't ignore me, he yelled."  
  
"I'm going to tell you something you already know, but humor me. Some people just aren't meant to be parents. It sounds like yours weren't. It's hard work and not always gratifying. Sometimes people just don't have the energy to do it right."  
  
"The priest at the hospice, he kept trying to help me make amends with my father. He kept saying that my father was so proud of me. But I needed to hear it from my dad."  
  
"I thought you said you forgave him?"  
  
"I thought I did. Maybe, do you think it's possible for me to have forgiven Joe Mackenzie and not my father?"  
  
"Yes." Pulling Mac into a loose hug, she added, "He was your dad. You wanted him to act like one. You deserved better."  
  
"I just," she stopped. "It's hard to believe," she broke off again. Frustrated, her hands clenched into fists, before she uncurled her fingers, one by one. "If I believe what the priest told me, I have to believe that just because my father didn't hit me, didn't always yell, and just flat out ignored me, that that's a form of love."  
  
"Instead of neglect?"  
  
"I didn't get the words or the traditional gestures associated with love. I got ignored. Occasionally, on his good days, he was like the dad I had imagined, but they were so few and far between, it was easy to forget them. It was easy to feel insignificant." Mac pulled away from Trish and sighed. "Sometimes, as much as I think I can do it, get away from all that stuff, and as far as I think I've come, I still feel like I'm trapped in that house, waiting for someone to notice me."  
  
"Mac, I meant it when I said it, you deserved better."  
  
Mac smiled slightly and raised a shoulder slightly and let it fall. "Harm's lucky he has such a good mom." She stood up. "I'll go get changed and we can go." At the door, she paused again. "Trish?" she called. "Thank you."  
  
Trish smiled and waited until the bedroom door was closed before breathing deeply and slumping against the couch. Harm loved Mac, of that she was certain. But she'd never realized, she wasn't sure he knew either, what a lot of work it was going to take to get Mac to understand it. Some people, she thought again, should not be parents. Contemplating Mac's door, she thought, and some people should. For the first time in months, she allowed herself to imagine fat little grandbabies. 


	10. Chapter 10

"I've scuttled my career," Mac announced upon sitting down in Audrey's office.  
  
Audrey struggled to hide her surprise, not at the statement, but at the fact that the statement was made without prompting on her part. "How's that?" she asked, proud of the neutral tone to her voice.  
  
"I won't be allowed to stay in the Marines," she clarified. "I'll either resign, if the Admiral kept this quiet, or I'll be discharged. It's unfair to make him pay for my mistake."  
  
Audrey didn't understand the technicalities involved in Mac's discharge, wouldn't even if Mac explained in them in detail, so she switched to a topic that she could handle without problems. "How does that make you feel?"  
  
"I don't know," Mac shrugged off the question. "I haven't really thought about it."  
  
Liar, liar, screamed Audrey in her head. Aloud, she asked, "How long were you in the Marines?"  
  
"Since I was 19."  
  
Audrey calculated the years. "And during that time, you never thought about a different lifestyle?"  
  
"Once," Sarah admitted on a sigh. "I joined a D.C. law firm. It wasn't for me though. I went back to JAG quickly."  
  
"Why did you go back?"  
  
Sarah shrugged and looked out the window. "I was a wild child before the Marines," she murmured in the direction of the window. Turning back to Audrey, she said, "I was headed nowhere and fast. Stuck in a marriage to a guy who was only slightly better than my dad."  
  
"And?" Audrey prompted, gesturing with her hands for Sarah to continue.  
  
"And the Marines took me away from that."  
  
Audrey frowned at her notepad. "You said you were a wild child. Did you drink? Take drugs?"  
  
"Drink, yes," she confirmed. "Drugs, at least I wasn't that stupid. I was a recovering alcoholic by nineteen."  
  
"What made you quit?"  
  
"A car accident. It killed my best friend and my uncle took care of me and helped me dry out."  
  
"Were you driving?"  
  
"No." She shook her head in denial. "But I was too young and too drunk to realize that he shouldn't have been driving either."  
  
"So you quit?"  
  
"With a lot of help from uncle," she added.  
  
"And you turned your life around?" Audrey asked.  
  
"Not over night, no. And I couldn't have done it without my uncle and the Marines." Sarah waved a hand as if she were brushing the memories the away.  
  
"Sarah." Audrey leaned forward and pulled a leg beneath her. She tapped her pencil against her notepad, taking the time to make sure her wording was satisfactory. "I'm going to do something I don't do very often. I'm going to give you an opinion. Normally, I'd try to help you arrive at the insight, but I think you need a pick me up." She smiled at her.  
  
"A pick me up?" Sarah repeated, a frown creasing her face.  
  
"Do you know what my least favorite Greek myth is?" When Sarah shook her head, she continued, "It's Pandora's box." She held up a hand to forestall the questions. "Ignoring the misogynistic tendency to once again blame the woman, it's because when people retell it, they leave the most important part of the story out. When Pandora opened the box, after most of the demons and problems had fled from it, she slammed the box closed. What you don't hear very often, is that in that box, at the bottom, underneath all the bad things, there was hope. The gods gave the world hope too."  
  
"This is your opinion?" Sarah questioned again.  
  
"No," Audrey denied. "I'm going to tell you something to help you let hope out. You're stronger than you think you are and it's time you gave yourself some credit for it."  
  
"I'm still a little," she paused, "lost."  
  
"Sarah, you pulled yourself up. You saved your life." Audrey smiled gently and tried to keep her voice soft. In all her years of psychiatry, she would never understand why people grew upset when they heard good things about themselves. "Give yourself some credit."  
  
"But," Sarah leaned forward a little and gestured to the space behind her, as if the ghost of the earlier conversation lingered behind them, "I just told you I did all that because of my uncle and the Marines."  
  
"Asking for help doesn't make you weak or less of a person." She smiled again and said, "Forgive me for this, I swear after today you will never hear about another ancient Greek from me again, but Socrates, or maybe it was Plato, I can never remember, once said that it's a wise man who knows he is not wise." Audrey waited a minute to see if Sarah would follow and finish her analogy. When the other woman remained stubbornly silent, she continued, "It takes a smart, strong person to realize that they need help and to accept it when it's offered."  
  
Sarah dropped her head to her knees and shuddered out a deep breath. Audrey could see her ribs shake under her sweater. "I've made such a mess of things," She pushed herself up and dashed a hand beneath her eyes. "Such a mess." She let out a small, humorless laugh. "When I did this, I really thought that I was ending the problems, not creating new ones."  
  
"Well, then. Let's start figuring out how to fix them. We'll start with an easy one, your career."  
  
"I really don't know how to be anything other than a Marine."  
  
"You're a lawyer aren't you?"  
  
"Yes, but - Yes," she finished.  
  
"But what?"  
  
"I think that's why I liked JAG so much. I felt like I was doing something." Sarah leaned her head against the palm of her hand and shook it a little.  
  
"So you think if you get a job as a civilian attorney, you won't be able to accomplish as much?" Audrey rephrased Sarah's sentence into a question that would force Sarah to expound.  
  
Sarah nodded slightly. "I did it once." She sighed and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "It was all about billable hours and generating paperwork."  
  
"And the cases at JAG don't require that sort of thing?"  
  
"Paperwork," she said. "We still have to do the menial things like motions and depositions and interrogatories, but we get the chance to argue really big cases, too. The firm work wasn't so, so," she trailed off, unable to find the right word.  
  
"Heroic?" Audrey supplied with a small smile. "They have big cases outside the military too, you know." She tried to remember her U.S. history course to name the big cases. "What about Brown versus the Board of Education? Or Miranda?"  
  
Sarah shrugged. "I guess."  
  
"Sarah," Audrey said her name firmly and waited until she had her full attention before speaking. "Big things are possible. Even in the civilian world."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Do you?"  
  
"Yeah," she said grudgingly. "I do. It's just going to take some getting used to."  
  
"Life means readjusting. I read that someplace."  
  
"Socrates again?" Sarah smiled her question.  
  
Relieved at the joke, even it was just a little one, Audrey answered honestly. "No, I think it was Nora Roberts," she said with a guilty smile. It surprised her when Sarah giggled.  
  
Later, when her last appointment left, Audrey sat down with her notes and reviewed her patients' progress. As she sifted through the pile, she spied Sarah's name. Pulling out the notes, she glanced over them to refresh her memory. She allowed herself to relax fractionally. Every patient was different and Sarah was a harder subject than some of the others. She held on to her defenses tightly and Audrey had begun to wonder if she would ever let them go long enough for anyone to help her. But today, she finally, finally, felt the walls begin to crack. The real problem, the problem that prompted the attempt, was still lurking behind the walls, but at least she was starting to gain access.  
  
Mentally, she tracked Sarah's progress. If she was to chart it on a graph, she'd find that the line was finally starting to go up. 


	11. Chapter 11

The apartment was dark and quiet as he put away the last of the dinner dishes. Through the door, he could hear the low murmur of voices, but he couldn't tell whether they were Mac's and his mother's or the television set. The dishes were done and the kitchen was clean, but he didn't want to leave its shelter. It was warm, still fragrant from dinner and bright. It felt like an oasis. He needed to find something to do to keep him in the kitchen.  
  
Glancing guiltily at the white painted door that divided the kitchen from the rest of the apartment, he filled up Mac's teapot and searched the cupboards for teabags or an infuser. His mother's voice floated through the doorway asking, "Harm, what are you doing in there?"  
  
"Making tea, do you want some?" He pushed open the door and saw his mother and Mac sitting next to each other on the couch. Mac caught his eyes and nodded a little, while his mother shook her head in decline. An odd sensation settled in his stomach as he watched the women interact. He wasn't positive, unsure of whether he was actually seeing results because they were there or because he needed, badly, to see them, but Mac seemed to have relaxed. Her muscles didn't look as rigid, her jaw less clenched.  
  
Trish said something to Mac, in a voice too low for him to hear the words, and stood up. She followed Harm back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. "Mac wanted honey and lemon in her tea," she explained.  
  
"I could have made it," he protested. He turned the burner to high and leaned against the counter. Folding his arms across his chest, he watched his mother slice a lemon in half.  
  
"I know you could." Trish squeezed lemon juice into a mug. She hitched a shoulder and looked up at him from under her bangs. "It's kind of nice," she admitted, "having someone to mother." She smiled fully, "Even if she's a fully grown adult and I have to give her back."  
  
Seeing his answering smile, she added, patting his cheek, "You grew up way too fast for my taste."  
  
"Mom," he complained, barely keeping the whine out of his voice. In a normal tone, he said, "I'm glad you two are getting along."  
  
Trish rested her hands lightly on the counter and sighed. Staring up at the cabinets, she inhaled deeply. "Harm," she started and stopped.  
  
"What?"  
  
Turning to face him, she brushed her bangs off her face with the back of her hand. "Harm," she started again, "I just want to make sure you'll be okay."  
  
"We'll be fine," he assured her.  
  
"No, not the two of you. You," she emphasized. "I want to make sure your aren't in over your head."  
  
He straightened against the counter and his muscles tensed. "Did she tell you something?"  
  
"Harm," she paused. Giving herself a minute, she tidied the already neat counters and put the other lemon half back into the refrigerator. "She's been through a lot."  
  
"I know." Beside him, the teapot began to bubble, he could hear the steam ready to force itself out.  
  
Trish put a teaspoonful of honey in with the lemon juice. She took out another mug and dropped the teabags into them. "It's a terrible thing," she said. "She had to ask for things you should never have to ask for from people."  
  
Harm contemplated the door and turned his attention back to his mother. She was still talking. "Sometimes, I wonder," she paused and looked at him, "I wonder if you both did."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You know that I love you and that I'm proud of you, right?" Trish checked. "That I'd be proud of you no matter what you were doing? I don't know if I tell you that enough."  
  
"I know," he reassured her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned his chin against her head. "I know."  
  
The teapot began to shriek and Trish pulled away, laughing a little at the tears in her eyes. "Good," she said, running a finger under her eyes to check for smeared mascara. She poured the boiling water into the mugs and handed him one. "Now you go drink your tea and I think I'm going to retire," she said.  
  
He followed her into the living room, where she deposited a mug with Mac and patted her on the head. "I have an early flight tomorrow and unlike you young ones, I need my rest. Good-night."  
  
"Night, Mom."  
  
"Night, Trish."  
  
He waited until the door had closed behind his mother and then turned to Mac. "So," he raised an eyebrow, "you and my mother seem to be getting along."  
  
Mac cupped her mug between her hands and blew gently across the water's surface. She gave him a tiny smile over the brim of the mug. "She didn't tell me any embarrassing stories about you, if that's what you're worried about."  
  
He relaxed against the couch. "I'm worried that you're plotting my death and just biding your time until my mother is gone."  
  
"You're safe," she told him.  
  
"Well, that's a load off my mind," he joked. He set his mug down and rested his forearms against his thighs. "Seriously," he angled his head so he could see her, "I'm glad you're not angry."  
  
"I'm really okay," she said. "Really."  
  
"I just needed to know that someone was looking out for you." He shifted restlessly. "Mac," he said quietly, "I-" He tried to push the words past his lips, but they seemed to catch on his teeth. He didn't doubt them. He knew what they meant and that he would mean them when he could finally say them. But, as it always seemed to do, time mocked him. He couldn't tell her now, not while everything was still so uncertain.  
  
She laid her hand against his forearm and said gently, "I know. I know, so you don't have to say it."  
  
He brushed his fingers over the back of her hand. "Then, please, try to get better. Please." He was reduced to begging. He was pleading for fifth and sixth chances, for a future.  
  
"I'm trying," she said. "Really, I am."  
  
"That's all I can ask for." He needed to move away from this conversation. He motioned to stand up.  
  
Her grip tightened on his arm. "I'm trying. But, Harm," she smiled sadly, unsure how to tell him what he needed to hear, "sometimes we don't always get happy endings."  
  
"Jesus, Mac." He shook her arm off and stomped away from the couch. "Jesus," he said again, pulling his fingers through his hair. "Why say something like that? Why think it?"  
  
She flinched at his tone and sighed a little. "It's the truth." She shrugged. She shifted her body on the couch so she could pull her knees up to her chest. "I'm trying. But I'm so tired of fighting." She circled her calves with her arms. "I feel like I've been doing it for so long."  
  
"Fighting what, Mac?" He asked sullenly. "Tell me and let me help."  
  
"It's nothing you can fix, flyboy," she told him. She blinked rapidly to stave off the tears that were threatening. "It's just been a struggle my whole life it seems." She added quietly, "And now it's a struggle to find a reason to keep fighting."  
  
He walked back over to the couch and lowered his body on to it. His arm brushed hers as he leaned back. "Sarah?" he asked softly.  
  
"What?" She mumbled against her knees.  
  
"While you're trying to find that reason, the reason to keep up the fight," he said.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Until you find your own reason," he reached up to cup her face, "how about you live for me?"  
  
The tears spilled over on his hand and she curled her hand around his thumb. Gently, he pulled her close to him and she nodded against his chest. "I can do that." 


	12. Chapter 12

It's been over since he asked her to get better. She has been trying; it has been a constant effort. She kept thinking of little reasons, small things, to keep her from sinking under, like she did when she was drying out. She was surprised to find that her system seemed to be working. The days were getting a little better and the nights were getting a little easier.  
  
As she improved, though, the fear began to sink in. She worried that she was taking away all of his defenses and leaving him empty. She was worried that a day would come when he'd need to call on them, to fight his own battle to live, and he'd find them gone; used up because she leeched them away the was salt draws moisture out. She was worried that she's the Dead Sea, deadly in her salinity, if left to linger on the skin too long.  
  
But she was being selfish, because she didn't push him away like she should. She didn't tell him to get out, to save himself while he could. Instead, she allowed him to pull her out of her apartment. After seeing his mother's success, he decided that the key to her well-being lay in sunshine and fresh air. Trailing after him like a reluctant child follows a parent, she went to the Smithsonian, the National Gallery, and the National Arboretum.  
  
Tonight, though, she has to force herself not to pull on his arm and convince him to stay home. Better to order pizza and watch a terrible video than go to a party thrown by the JAG staff in their honor. The Admiral accepted her resignation, he'd had no choice, at the same time he reinstated Harm. She wanted to disappear, to slink away quietly from the office, but the Admiral and Harriet wouldn't let that happen.  
  
The bar was crowded, packed with office workers and low level government employees celebrating the start of the weekend, and the JAG staff was huddled in a small corner of the restaurant. The tables are packed with finger food and appetizers. She's dismayed to realize that they're the last to arrive and she stopped walking. She didn't want to face them. She tugged on his elbow and whispered under her breath, "Not too late to run. They haven't seen us yet."  
  
"I've got more to worry about than you do," he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.  
  
"Why?" She asked, honestly confused. She tightened her hold on his elbow and forced him to turn around to face her. "They love you. They're happy to have you back in the fold."  
  
He waved a hand, brushing off her comment. "This party is for you."  
  
"And you," she said. "Don't you think it's a little," she stumbled over the word, "weird?"  
  
"How weird?"  
  
"Well," she paused, trying to figure out a way to phrase her sentence without eliciting a wince, "I mean, half of it is a party for someone who ended her career because she swallowed one too many pills."  
  
"Oh." He frowned, his eyebrows sinking low on his forehead and he rubbed a hand over it, smoothing out the creases. "Oh, Mac. I never thought about that." He glanced over at the tables. "Shit," he swore.  
  
He rested his hands on her biceps and examined her face. "We can go. I'll go over and explain and then we'll go."  
  
She gathered the folds of his sweater in her hands and looked down at their feet. She shook her head. "No, I can do this." She forced her voice to sound light. "Don't need another check in the crazy column by becoming agoraphobic."  
  
"They meant well," he pointed out.  
  
"I know," she nodded in agreement. She shrugged and scuffed her toe in a semi-arc on the floor. "Maybe," she looked up at him from under her bangs, "we can pretend it's just a welcome back party for you. Not a welcome back slash good luck party?"  
  
He leaned his head on top of hers. "We can do that."  
  
"Okay." She pulled away from him and straightened her body slowly, one vertebrae at a time. Their friends were still half a restaurant away and the wood floor yawned before her. Trying to control the onslaught of anxiety, she told herself that the people laughing at the tables are her friends. That they've done what they've done because they care. She tried, but she wanted nothing more than to hide.  
  
He reached down and tucked her hand into his. Swinging their hands between them, he pulled her up to the tables. The first few minutes are awkward. Silence punctuated the conversations and people kept sneaking little glances at her. She shifted uneasily each time she caught them, tucking her hair behind her ears or scanning the table tops and the other patrons near them. Her fingers traced patterns in the condensation from the glasses, forming complex networks of water on the table's surface.  
  
She didn't know when it happened, but slowly, gradually, the cadences grew more natural; the tension eased as they started to reminisce. Laughter replaced the silences and she found herself smiling. Beneath the tables, her fingers squeezed his once and let go. She smiled at him and he smiled back before returning to the conversation. It relaxed her, made her a little less frightened to know that she can have these little moments. Moments where she didn't have to rely on him to remember to breathe. Moments where he can replenish his strength because he didn't have to carry her. She can hold herself up tonight and it feels good. 


	13. Chapter 13

"I want to try word association today, okay?" Audrey asked a few minutes into their session. On healthier, less complicated patients, Audrey used this tactic to get know her patients. She had been counseling Sarah for a while, so she didn't need to get to know her. Instead, she was hoping to relax Sarah enough to sneak behind her walls.  
  
Sarah nodded, her eyebrows dipping a little to the center of her forehead, but she remained quiet.  
  
"Good. You know how this works then? I say a word and you say the first thing that comes to your mind. We'll start with an easy one. Ocean."  
  
"Blue," Sarah answered promptly.  
  
Audrey nodded. The response was predictable. "Blue then," she said, building on Sarah's response.  
  
"Harm's eyes," she said and then clapped a hand over her mouth; she flushed, but her cheeks pulled up a little, letting Audrey know that she was hiding a smile behind her hand.  
  
"Red."  
  
"Poppies." Sarah removed her hand from her mouth and twisted her fingers in her lap.  
  
"Okay," Audrey drawled the word out, "that's a new one. Why poppies?"  
  
"Did you see the 'Wizard of Oz'? I always thought the scene where they fell asleep in the meadow of poppies was so pretty. They, the poppies, were all red and they contrasted so nicely with the green city behind them. It always stuck in my mind." Sarah lifted her hands, palms up, and let them fall back onto her thighs. "I wear a lot of red, I think, partly because of that color."  
  
"Interesting." Audrey refrained from commenting further. But there were questions forming that she could save for a later date. Most children never watched that scene with anything approaching Sarah's admiration. They wanted Dorothy to succeed. And it seemed Sarah envied Dorothy's nap. She readjusted her plans for the next session and continued on with the game. "Dogs."  
  
"Jingo."  
  
"Jingo?"  
  
"My dog. I had to send him to Vermont, though. I was just away too often and it was too cruel to him to keep him locked up."  
  
Audrey thought a pet would be a wonderful idea for Sarah. "Did you ever consider a puppy?"  
  
"I'm away too often," she repeated, then frowned. "Or I was. Maybe I should reconsider."  
  
Audrey glanced around her room and uttered her next word as if the décor inspired it and that she hadn't been thinking of the right phrase for the last few days. "Travel."  
  
"Planes."  
  
This was not the way it was supposed to work, Audrey wanted to huff. "Planes."  
  
"Paraguay." The word slipped from her lips.  
  
"Paraguay?" Audrey meant to ask, why Paraguay, but it sounded like a version of the association game. Watching Sarah's body tense and her eyes lose focus, she realized that her unintentional continuation may have served its purpose.  
  
"Screams." She started to rise and fell back against the chair. Rather than looking relaxed, she reminded Audrey of the street performers who dress up as statues in the cities. Her muscles were too tense, her stillness too controlled.  
  
"Screams?" Audrey prompted softly.  
  
"They don't stop." Her hands cupped her ears and fell back to her sides. "I could hear him - Clay - screaming across the courtyard. All night long. It echoes in my head."  
  
"Why was he screaming?" Audrey hoped her tone sounded neutral but she was afraid that she sounded more like an interested onlooker, grotesquely fascinated by the car accident before her.  
  
"They were hurting him. I don't know what they did exactly. I mean, I have a pretty good idea, but I can't really say. I don't know what falls within the parameters of classified." Sarah's jaw clamped shut and she turned her face away. "He couldn't walk. When they brought him back, he couldn't walk."  
  
"Sarah," Audrey tapped her lightly on the wrist with a finger, "did they hurt you?"  
  
"No." She shook her head, her brown hair splaying against the side of her face. "No. He - he - Clay tried to protect me. He said, he, um," she licked her lips and drew a deep breath, "he said he loved me and that he wanted to protect me." Her fingertips touched the base of her throat lightly. "May I have a glass of water?"  
  
Audrey got up to pour a glass. "He told you he loved you?"  
  
"Yes." Sarah sniffled and took a long pull of water from the glass.  
  
"Why does that make you unhappy?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Why does it make you unhappy to know that someone loves you?"  
  
"Because," she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, " because he was right. Everyone who loves me dies or wants to die. I just hurt people. I seem incapable of doing anything else."  
  
"Clay said that?" Audrey was proud of herself. Her voice sounded normal.  
  
"No," she shook her head. "Not Clay. Harm did." She looked over at Audrey before glancing away again. "But he's not wrong."  
  
"Why do you say that?"  
  
She leaned forward, face in hands, elbows on knees. Her feet bounced a little, sending tiny vibrations of movement throughout her body. "I've - so many - there are so many people who are hurt because of me."  
  
"Why isn't he wrong?" she repeated the question, her tone a little more strident.  
  
"Oh God." The words tumbled from her mouth, sounding more like a call for help than oath or prayer. "Oh, God." Her hands were shaking and the water sloshed at the lips of the glass. Moving slowly, Audrey leaned forward and eased the glass from her grip. Sarah's fingers had tightened around it, Audrey could see the whitened knuckles, and she didn't know how much pressure it could before its walls caved in.  
  
"Sarah, calm down." Audrey soothed. "Inhale slowly. Now let it out. That's it. Once more. Good girl. Now let it out slowly." She waited until Sarah seemed steadier. "Now," she prompted, "start from the beginning."  
  
"No." Her voice was firm. "No. I don't want to talk about this. I just want it all to stop."  
  
"What do you want to stop?"  
  
"The pain." She pressed her lips together tightly. "I'm so tired of it. I'm so tired of hurting people."  
  
"How do you hurt them?" Audrey rubbed her fingers across her forehead, trying to ward off the vague pain of a tension headache.  
  
"I don't know. I just do. And the worst part is, I stay okay. I'm healthy, up until a few days ago, I had a good job, and I have a nice apartment. I stay okay and every where else, everyone else's lives turn to dust and they are left to pick up the pieces of their lives after I touch them."  
  
"Who do you think you've hurt?"  
  
She swept her arm across her body to encompass the whole room. "Everyone." She let her arm drop against her side. "Just everyone. First Eddie died when I was teenager, then my husband. Someone killed my ex-boyfriend because of me. Harm lost his career. Clay was hurt." Her voice rose as she listed her transgressions and then dipped to a near whisper. "I'm no damn good." She brushed her hair back from her face. "It's like the theory of karma? Only I'm paying in this life. And I don't suffer, I just have to watch everyone around me sink into a black hole because of me. It would just be so much better for everyone if I just . disappeared."  
  
"Do you think everyone would agree with you?"  
  
"Depending on the day," she sighed. She rubbed her eyes, swiping at the tears. "No," she admitted. "I'm not a teenager, Dr. Hepburn. I don't want them to miss me. It's not about showing them how much they'll miss when I'm gone. I want them to be safe. To be happy."  
  
"So you do realize that they'll miss you?"  
  
Sarah studied her cuticles. Her answer was long in coming, and Audrey was about to ask her question again, when Sarah forced her answer out. "Yes, but sometimes I don't get it. I thought the Admiral finally saw through me. When he wouldn't let Harm rescue me," she clarified. "I would have died down there, probably in a pretty ugly way, too. I thought maybe the Admiral thought it was for the best. But when I got back, he was happy to see me and he came to visit me in the hospital."  
  
"You thought the Admiral wanted you to die?"  
  
"Well, no. Not really, not rationally. It would have been more like sucking poison out of a wound, unpleasant but necessary to keep everything else alive." She choked on a laugh. "It sounds crazy."  
  
"It doesn't sound crazy. Stop saying that now. You're confused, you're hurt, but you aren't crazy." Pursing her lips, she glanced down at her notes and tapped her pencil rapidly against her notepad. It was rare that she couldn't find the words she needed. It was, she sometimes joked, how she got into therapy in the first place. She needed an outlet where she had willing ears to listen to her. It was also rare for her to be angry at people she didn't know. She reminded herself that statements were ten percent intention and ninety percent perception, that there were two sides of Sarah's story, possibly three or four sides, but none of that quelled her very real desire to choke the living daylights out of someone. Preferably the man whose comment seemed to have precipitated the events. Her fingers tightened on the notepad and threatened to snap her pencil. "So," she said after a minute, her voice oddly pitched, "let's go back to Harm's comment." She glanced down at her notes. "He said what exactly?"  
  
Sarah sniffled and rubbed her eyes before answering. "He said that every man I've ever been involved with is either dead or feels like he is."  
  
Audrey drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. This session was rapidly becoming more exhausting than her Pilates class. She studied Sarah carefully before saying, "But that's not why you tried to kill yourself." It was meant to be a question, but as the sentence left her mouth, it grew conviction and emerged a statement. Because it was rapidly becoming clear that Sarah didn't try to kill herself because of one careless comment. As she watched for a reaction, Sarah's muscles contracted, tensing against the chair.  
  
"What?" she asked, reaching for a tissue to blow her nose and buy herself time.  
  
"That's not why you tried to kill yourself," she repeated.  
  
Sarah shook her head. "No." She licked her lips nervously. "Why?"  
  
Audrey resisted the urge to sigh and pushed her hair back from her face. "If you hadn't already been depressed, rather, if you hadn't already believed that that was the truth, you wouldn't have reacted that way. You would have reacted differently."  
  
"Differently how?" she demanded.  
  
"Well, without knowing all the facts, I think other women might have reacted with a jab to the nose." Audrey smiled to let Sarah know she was joking.  
  
"I was being really horrible to him." Sarah shrugged. "We were fighting the whole time. He flew down to rescue me and I picked a fight."  
  
"You haven't learned to fight fair yet?"  
  
"No," she breathed. "We really haven't." She brushed at the link on her sweater, studying the knit carefully before continuing. "It wasn't him. It wasn't even that comment. It just didn't really help I suppose."  
  
"So what was it?"  
  
"It was," she paused, "it was me. It was me. I don't know, you know, if I was ever really happy."  
  
"Why is that?" Audrey tried to remember details of Sarah's life from her file.  
  
"I just - every time I think I've finally found it, it slips away." Sarah stared hard at the paneling on the wall, as if the cherry wood held the answers to her problems. She cupped her hand, turned it over, and stretched her fingers out. She turned her gaze back to Audrey. "It just goes away. And I'm tired of it. I'm tired of waiting for something good to happen only to have it take away again."  
  
She leaned her head against her palm. Now that she had started talking, she was incapable of staunching the flow of words. "I never believed in fairy tales. Or if I did, I stopped early. There didn't seem to be any point. But there's always that one stupid part of you, you know," she fisted her hand against her chest, "that wants to hope.  
  
"I thought, I really did, that when he showed up that that was it. And then we were so mean to each other." She waved a hand. "It wasn't all his fault. Or all my fault. But I'd really thought, really believed it, that our time had come."  
  
"What happened?" Audrey prompted gently.  
  
"We just couldn't stop the bickering. And Clay was hurt, Harm was jealous, and then it turned out he resigned because he thought he loved me. And I," she sighed, "I just couldn't deal with it anymore."  
  
"But that still wasn't what prompted your attempt."  
  
"No." Sarah pulled her knees to her chest and hooked an arm around them. "No. At some point," she exhaled sharply, "at some point, I listened to us. We couldn't love each other and say those things. At least, not in a healthy way. How could I say those things to him? How could he? It was sort of like that realization killed me. Or killed what little hope I had left, anyway."  
  
"You lost hope?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess. It was more like I didn't have any faith left. I destroyed everything." She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "I always do."  
  
"So you were pinning all, or the little left, of your hope on him?"  
  
"No," she said, refusing to make eye contact. "Not really. But - it's just that - he gave up so much. Clay was hurt. And it was all because they thought they loved me. I get so tired of trying to find new reasons to hope for something good. I had destroyed two more men's lives." She glanced over at the doctor. "I'm just one of those women who is no damn good."  
  
"So you tried to kill yourself?"  
  
"It sounds stupid when you put it like that."  
  
"No, it doesn't." Audrey leaned forward. "Sarah, I've seen teenagers who want to kill themselves because they think they aren't pretty. Hell, I've been that teenager." Audrey shrugged. "What I'm trying to say is, whatever your reasons are, they're your reasons. Which makes them legitimate and not stupid."  
  
"Okay." Sarah brushed at the drying tears and smiled a little. "Um, I think I may have given you the wrong idea. About Harm, I mean. He's not a bad guy. In fact, he's been pretty terrific recently."  
  
"Sarah," Audrey answered her smile with one of her own, "you may need to rethink your definition of love and just learn how to fight fairly." She reached out to pat Sarah's knee.  
  
"Maybe," she murmured. "I just don't know what to do anymore." She tugged on a lock of hair. "I know, rationally, that I'm not just an unwitting black widow. But I don't know how to get back to the person I was before I believed that." She sniffled and blew her nose. "I'm just lost."  
  
"Consider me your compass," Audrey soothed and handed her a fresh a tissue. "Lean on me a little and we'll find you." 


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: I normally don't put these in, because I don't want to disrupt the flow of the story, but I need to take a moment to thank everyone who has been reviewing this story. (No, this isn't the last part, sorry. :) ) I just wanted to say thanks, it means a lot, and I really appreciate it.  
  
They are hours away from home, sitting on a blanket that he dug out of his trunk on beach on the Eastern Shore. He'd picked her up, kidnapped she had argued over dinner, after her session with Dr. Hepburn. Her eyes had been red, puffy, and glazed with a dazed, tired expression. He should have taken her home, tucked her into bed, and stayed with her until she fell asleep. He should have asked her about her session. He should have, but he didn't. Instead, he turned his car north and headed into Maryland.  
  
The sky had painted itself in colors different from its ordinary black and white. It had been Mac who had spotted them. The ruby red aurora borealis with a thin band of silver weaving itself into the red. It was rare to see them this far south, but the storm on the sun had a greater influence on the night sky than the effects of smog and pollution. They sat for hours beneath the colored sky, watching the lights until they vanished, ebbing back into space like the tide shrinking back from the shore.  
  
The lights were gone now and the sky was filled with tiny stars. He watched as she created new stellar maps seen only in her head. Her finger traced patterns in the sky. He could see the looping lines, circling around tiny clusters of stars, but didn't know which stars fell into which groups. There were tiny curlicues, giant rambling lines, angles and hard lines, all etched invisibly in the spaces between the stars.  
  
But the sky remained a jumbled mess, tiny dots piled on top of each other, the blinking lights of an airplane, the smooth arc of a satellite, and she couldn't organize them all. Her hand dropped to her leg and she took her gaze away from the sky to steal a glance at him. "Harm?" she asked, her voice hushed in the dark.  
  
"Hmm?" His voice also low and quiet. The deserted beach commanded the subdued tones. Under the night sky, the sand and water had formed the mortar for a kind of cathedral. An homage to the spectacular, more daunting and impressive in its vastness than those created by man.  
  
"Is this what it feels like when you fly?" Her hand swept towards the sky. "Does it feel like you're sitting in the stars?"  
  
He shifted and sat up. "Most of the time, you don't really get a chance to look around."  
  
"But in Sarah?" she persisted.  
  
"Sometimes." He rested his elbows on his knees. "It's a pretty amazing sight."  
  
"Do you think anyone else saw the Northern lights?"  
  
"I guess."  
  
"It's odd, isn't it?" She tilted her head back to study the sky again.  
  
"What's that?" The starlight and the sliver of the moon combined to wash the beach in a weak, white light, leaving the scenery painted in shades of black and white. He watched the column of her throat stretch, the pale lines of it curved as she dipped farther back. He wanted to reach out, to touch the fan of black hair that shifted as she scanned the sky.  
  
"So many people probably missed the lights and all because they didn't bother to look up." She angled her face slightly and glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "They miss so much." She pointed. "There's a shooting star. You know, in Japan, they're considered bad luck." She frowned. "At least, I think they were."  
  
"I think I prefer to think of them as good luck. Did you make a wish?"  
  
"No," she sighed. "It might have been a satellite."  
  
"I remember watching them as a kid. I used to lay out on the front yard and watch them at night."  
  
"Yeah," she agreed. "God, that seems like so long ago." Her lips quirked at the corners, pushing her cheeks into a smile. "My mom used to have this ugly purple velvet skirt that I wore around the house as a ball gown."  
  
He stretched himself out on the blanket, hands laced together beneath his head, ankles crossed. "Somehow I can't picture you doing that."  
  
She glanced down at him. "I wasn't born an adult, you do realize."  
  
"I know," he defended himself. "I just always pictured you as a solemn little girl."  
  
She reached out and pinched his forearm lightly. Brushing off his indignant cry, she said, "I did manage to have some fun, thank you very much," she said haughtily. She sniffed lightly and turned her face to the sky, more for the pose of affected indignation than studying the sky.  
  
He snaked an arm around her waiste and pulled her back against the blanket. She slapped his chest lightly but didn't struggle away from him. "Thank you for doing this tonight," she said quietly. "I really needed it."  
  
"You looked like it." He brushed a strand of hair from her face. "Did everything go okay today?"  
  
She bit her lip and rolled over to her side to push herself into a sitting position. Resting her cheek against her shoulder, she studied him before saying, "Dr. Hepburn said we needed to learn how to fight fairly."  
  
"When did she say this?"  
  
"Earlier today," she answered slowly. "She's not wrong you know."  
  
"Probably not," he agreed. He propped himself up on his elbows before sitting up completely. He was entering into this conversation reluctantly. He could already tell it was going to be unpleasant. He could feel the tension ooze across them, a sick slime that appeared whenever he started to feel comfortable around her. Her spine was straight and rigid, an unyielding line of hurt and nerves. "What else did you talk about?" He asked the question that would snowball itself into an avalanche of he said, she said, filled with the detritus of past hurts and accusations.  
  
"Lots of things," she evaded. "Fairy tales," she told the water.  
  
"Fairy tales?" he repeated. "My mom used to read me some of them when I was a kid. She called them folk stories. I was five before I realized I'd been had." He sighed in fake disgust at the memories. He didn't add that she also took him to see "Snow White." Or that he had once wanted to be Prince Charming.  
  
"Poor boy." She stared at him for a minute before adding, "You know, I used to think that they just messed up little girls' lives. I guess that's not true."  
  
"How do they mess up little girls?"  
  
"And boys, apparently," she amended. "Well, okay, maybe not children's lives, but adults' lives. We just become so accustomed to happily ever after and the idea of someone swooping down on a white horse that we abandon realistic love in favor of something that ends before you see Cinderella throwing a fit because the Prince forgot their anniversary and attended a State dinner."  
  
He snorted. "And the boys?"  
  
"You do the same thing. You base your ideas of a perfect woman a character who is so beautiful that woodland creatures sit at her feet." She sighed. "We ignore the fact that we might fall in love with someone who can't sing well enough to charm the birds or who has never seen a white horse outside of the movies. We hope for the unrealistic fairy tale love and then, in the end, everyone is disappointed."  
  
"This is what you talked about today?"  
  
"Sort of. Not just this anyway," she clarified. "But it, disappointment, not fairy tales, seems to be a running theme in my life."  
  
He leaned forward a bit to see her face, but she kept watching the waves.  
  
"You know I love you, right?" she asked softly. "You don't have to say it back or even feel it. I just wanted you to know that I do." She smiled slightly.  
  
He didn't know how to answer. She had a spectacular gift for startling him into silence. Luckily, she continued without leaving room for his response. "I'm telling you this now, because I finally think I really mean it." She paused and drew a deep breath, holding the way a child does before jumping into cold water. "You need to go back home."  
  
"What?" He wanted to shout and nearly gave into the urge.  
  
"You have to move back to your apartment," she explained patiently.  
  
"No." He shook his head. "You need the company."  
  
"I'll get a dog."  
  
"Damn it, Mac." He stood up and paced away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Weren't you the one who said you were sick of this dance?"  
  
He wasn't surprised to find that she'd followed him. She touched his shoulder gently and the pulled her hand away quickly. "I'm sorry." She tugged at the bottom of her sweater. "I didn't mean to make such a mess."  
  
He turned to face her, arms crossed over his chest. Her body was curled over, huddled against the wind and some weight only she could feel. He wanted to shake her. Did she think she was the only who got hurt by these conversations? "What did you mean?"  
  
"I wanted." She stopped. "I need." She turned slightly into the wind and sucked at the salt air in big, greedy gulps. "God, Harm," she said at last. "I have no idea who I am anymore. I'm just gone. There's nothing left and soon it's going to suck you in, too."  
  
She pinched the fabric of his shirt between her fingers, anchoring herself to his arm. "You need to leave. You can't honestly say that this time hasn't taken its toll on you. You can't do it anymore."  
  
"What if I want to stay?"  
  
"You can't," she said emphatically. "I need you too much right now." She tugged lightly at the fabric in her hand. "I need to learn how to stand on my own two feet again." It was contradictory and she knew it. But she didn't know how to explain it to him. She was depending on him too much. One of them would get hurt and she didn't know how she would be handle it.  
  
"Are you leaving?"  
  
"No." She shook her head in denial. "I'm staying."  
  
"Mac," he began.  
  
Her hand dropped away. "We talked about Paraguay."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Dr. Hepburn and I. We talked about Paraguay, sort of." She shrugged. "I told her why I tried to kill myself. Rather, she helped me understand my reasons. Didn't you ever wonder why there wasn't a note?"  
  
He did. Now that she was getting better, or at least pretending to for his sake, he had allowed himself to relax a little, to let his concentration slip occasionally. He no longer wanted to follow her into the bathroom to make sure she'd come out. He didn't worry about whether she'd be there when he returns from work. He can suppress the urge to check to see if she was breathing late at night.  
  
When he stopped focusing on all those worries, though, he began to wonder about other things. Like, why she tried to kill herself? Or, why didn't anyone notice she'd deteriorated to a point where suicide seemed like a reasonable alternative to everything else? Why didn't anyone notice that she needed to be rescued again?  
  
She shrugged again, bunching the material of her sweater between her shoulders and her ears. "I don't think I really knew at the time. I was just so empty, so tired of feeling that way."  
  
"Pretty odd, considering you were the one who blew me off in Paraguay." His voice was bitter; he just managed to keep a mocking tone out of his voice.  
  
"I know," she replied. "Harm, I know I hurt you. I'm sorry. I really am, but I can't," she broke off and wandered closer to the water. "I don't need your guilt on top of mine. You know that thing you said about me and my exes?"  
  
He felt sick. He was certain he was going to throw up. Please, he prayed, please let it have been something else that started this. "That was a cruel thing for me to have said once, let alone twice."  
  
"Yes," she agreed. "It was . careless. But I understand why you said it. I wasn't exactly being sweet and innocent at the time."  
  
"Please, Mac, tell me that wasn't the reason for this."  
  
"Harm," she placed a hand on his cheek, "it wasn't the reason. Honest. It just sort of came at a bad time and confirmed a lot of things I'd already been thinking."  
  
He ran a hand down her wrist, circling her forearm like a handcuff.  
  
"Please," she pleaded, "don't look like that. I swear, it wasn't that comment. It wasn't you. I did all of this. Not you."  
  
"Obviously," he ground out between his teeth, "that's not true."  
  
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly but didn't answer him. They stood still, frozen at the edge of the water. His fingers cuffed her wrist; their arms were trapped between their bodies. Her gaze was fixed on the water. "It is true," she insisted quietly. She brushed at a strand of hair that was flirting with her lips. "You hurt me, yes, but I could survive that. I don't know how to make you believe that. Maybe I did it because I thought my last chance at the fairy tale I've always secretly wanted had disappeared. Somewhere along the way, my last dream died and it took me with it."  
  
She stomped her foot in the sand and looked at him. His lips were pressed into a tight line, hardening the features of his face. She would have given anything to start this conversation over. To not have it at all and let fate direct the rest of their lives.  
  
"Why did you say that it would never work in Paraguay?" he asked after a minute of silence.  
  
"Did you hear us?" she asked him. "The things we said to each other?"  
  
He nodded. "Did you believe it when you said it?"  
  
Her knees weakened and she sat down without freeing her arm from his grasp. He followed her down, lowering himself on to the sand. "I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe."  
  
"I went down there because." Her fingers on his mouth prevented him from finishing his sentence.  
  
"Don't say it yet." She shook her head. "I'm not ready to hear it. I won't believe it now."  
  
"When will you?" he questioned.  
  
"I don't know," she said. "I'm no good to anyone like this. I just need time to get back on my feet."  
  
They sat in silence. Her left arm was stretched across his body, his fingers rubbing the inside of her wrist. She wondered if he knew he was doing that. She wondered who he was trying to soothe. "I'm sorry I hurt you in Paraguay," she apologized softly again. "When I heard you say you resigned - Clay was hurt, you lost your job, and once again, I was to blame. I couldn't - Harm." She trailed off.  
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
"I - living has never been easy for me. It's been more like surviving. I got tired of just trying to take it one day at a time." She shrugged. "And then everything sort of fell apart from the inside out. I can't explain it any better. Paraguay or why I tried to kill myself. I really can't."  
  
His fingers tightened around her wrist and loosened slightly. He transferred her wrist to his right hand and bent his knees, never losing contact with her skin. "Mac, I hate talking about this kind of thing," he said. "I think I prefer the big gestures."  
  
"Like resigning or flying your mom across the country?" she asked with a smile. "It's okay. You don't have to. I think I'm all talked out for the day."  
  
He pinned her hand to the sand. "Okay, then you sit and I'll talk." He stared at the water and listened to the waves, trying to gather his thoughts. This was their last appeal. Tonight, the judges would render their final decision in Rabb v. Mackenzie. He needed his argument to be flawless. "We haven't been close for a while," he said.  
  
She shook her head and swallowed. "No, we haven't."  
  
"This past year, I don't think I recognize us anymore. However you choose to define 'us,' I don't think we fit the description. Paraguay, I guess as you said, confirmed everything I'd thought, too."  
  
"You too, huh?" she sniffled quietly.  
  
"I went down there to rescue you," he said. "And to tell you I loved you, and then I saw you kiss Webb. Maybe we just weren't meant to have anything other than friendship."  
  
"Okay." She tried to stand up, but he kept her hand trapped beneath his. "Please let go."  
  
"Not going to happen," he told her. "The thing is, I don't think we are meant to be just friends. None of my friends have ever hurt me the way you have. I've never hurt them either."  
  
"Would you just tell me what you're trying to say?" Her voice was growing impatient.  
  
"I never cared about my friends the way I care about you. So, you need time, you got it. But I'm not going anywhere."  
  
"Oh." Her mouth dropped open. "Oh. I thought - I thought you were angry with me."  
  
He paused before answering. "Furious, actually. First, because of Paraguay and then because of Clay. And then this."  
  
"This?" she asked.  
  
"Did you honestly thing that I'd be happy that you tried to kill yourself?" he demanded. Sometimes, he marveled at the sheer stupidity of this woman. He gave up everything to bring her back from Paraguay. And with a few thoughtless words and one careless gesture, she nearly took it all away again.  
  
"No," she said in a small voice.  
  
"God, Mac," he pulled her closer to him, "you scared me."  
  
"I'm sorry." She pushed herself far enough away to see his face. "For everything."  
  
"Me too," he echoed. "I'm not going anywhere. You want me to move back to my apartment, fine. But I'm not leaving you."  
  
"It might be better for you if you did."  
  
"No. It wouldn't." He tugged lightly on her wrist and she moved back into his arms. "You need to learn to stand on your own. Good for you. I'll stand next to you."  
  
"Okay." 


	15. Chapter 15

Once, when she was younger, an alcoholic and foolishly in love with a man who really was no good, she hiked in to the backcountry of Sedona with too little water and not enough sense. She walked across rocks and dry soil until she stood at the edge of the canyon. Spread out below her feet, the canyon was a sharp contrast of reds and greens beneath a deep blue sky. She could see Castle and Pyramid Rocks in the distance. The horizon was hemmed in by a towering wall of red rocks, banded by a thin layer of white and green limestone. She stood on a ledge, buffeted by the high desert wind, and watched the scenery until her husband tackled her from behind and brought her down, laughing as she narrowly avoided the edge of the rock.  
  
There were days when she missed the sharp dry heat of the high desert. The early shade of the canyon floors. She missed the rocks and the sand, the strong yellow light that sunglasses couldn't quite filter out. She missed the wind and the dust devils. The jumbled mess of stars in the night sky. She missed the way the desert wouldn't let her forget, wouldn't let her slide from day to day, the way it reminded her each day that she was alive.  
  
Since she left Arizona, when she needed to calm down, when she needed to quell the nerves that threatened to overwhelm her, she pictured herself standing on top of that red rock under a cloudless sky. Sometimes, even when she was happy, she would picture that place and herself in it. She bolstered the canyon walls with the good memories, drawing them out when she needed support.  
  
As she huddled in a chair next to Harriet's desk, she tried to remember the calm that she felt at the edge of the canyon. She tried to remember the silence. But she was acutely aware that she was sitting in the middle of the JAG bullpen in a sweater and jeans waiting for Harm to get out of court. Harriet's chatter was soothing, easing the tingles caused by the stares of her former co-workers. She knew they didn't mean to make her feel like a fish in a glass tank, but she couldn't help wish that they could find something else, anything else, to do.  
  
"You know what I don't get?" Harriet asked. She tapped her fingers against the keyboard and scanned the bullpen. When she caught a stray stare, she glared at the starer until he or she turned away. Until Commander Rabb got out of court, she had appointed herself to take care of the Colonel. Mac. Sarah.  
  
"Quantum physics?" Mac hazarded a guess.  
  
"You know what else I don't get?" Harriet smiled, relieve to hear the Colonel . Mac . Sarah make a joke.  
  
"What to call me?"  
  
"That makes three things." Harriet cupped her chin in her hand and studied the other woman. "What do I call you since you brought it up?"  
  
"My name is Sarah," Mac suggested. "Of course, Mac is a little closer to Ma'am." She curled her fingers into her palms and forced her hands to relax against her thighs. "I feel underdressed," she confessed in a low voice.  
  
"What if I just call you A.J.'s godmother? It's a beautiful sweater." Harriet nodded at the soft red sweater.  
  
"Harm called while I was out shopping," Mac said. "I didn't have time to change because he has to be back in court this afternoon." She exhaled softly. "Thank you. And what don't you get?"  
  
"Men and long hair."  
  
Mac wrinkled her nose slightly and asked, "Men with long hair or their fascination with women who have long hair?"  
  
Harriet paused and thought for a moment. "Both actually. But I was referring to their fascination with it. I had to make a hairdresser's appointment and Bud wanted to know why I didn't let my hair grow out. Never mind the fact that even if I were to let it grow, it would still have to be shaped and trimmed. But with two kids and a job, maybe I don't have time to do my hair every morning."  
  
"Did you breathe at all during that?" Mac marveled. Her nerves were abandoned as she tried to sort through Harriet's thoughts.  
  
"No." Harriet heaved a sigh. "I don't think so."  
  
"I don't know what to tell you," she said. "Mostly because I don't know what you said," she teased.  
  
Harriet waved her hand. "It wasn't important. I was just blowing off steam." She glanced up and smiled at the bullpen doors. "Here comes Harm."  
  
"Goody." Mac sighed. "He's going to make me eat vegetables." She pushed herself out of the chair and smiled down out Harriet. "It was good talking to you, Harriet."  
  
"Same here, A.J.'s godmother." Harriet smiled back. "I'm glad you're -" She broke off and flushed, unsure how to phrase her thoughts. "Okay," she finished lamely.  
  
"Thank you," Mac replied softly. She glanced in the direction of Harm's office, forcing herself not to look at her old office. But she saw it anyway; the room was dark and she absurdly glad that whoever was now occupying it wasn't in it at the moment.  
  
She knocked lightly on the doorjamb to Harm's office. "You harangued?" She smiled to take the sting out of it.  
  
"I called you, if that's what you mean." He looked up from a stack of messages and raised an eyebrow.  
  
"You say potato." She shrugged.  
  
He dropped the stack on his desk and grabbed his cover. "Do you have time for lunch?"  
  
"That's why you called, right?" She gestured to the door. "Feed me."  
  
"Actually, I called because," he started, then sat down behind his desk and motioned to the chairs in front of it, "I have to go out to the Seahawk tomorrow."  
  
"Oh." She sat down heavily. "Okay."  
  
"I have to go home after work to pack."  
  
She frowned and picked at a spot on the edge of his desk. "Why did you call me then?"  
  
"I wanted to tell you in person," he explained. He smiled sheepishly. "I was worried about you when I couldn't reach you at your apartment."  
  
"I'm not made of glass," she huffed. "I was out shopping. You see me everyday. You call every lunch hour and every night when you get back to your apartment." She ticked off the list on her fingers, smiling so he would know his concern didn't bother her.  
  
"I know." He shrugged. "I still worry. I'll call as often as I can while I'm gone."  
  
Her frown reappeared and deepened. She tucked her feet under her chair. "Okay," she said again. She paused and built red canyon walls in her mind. "No. Wait. Maybe I'll go away."  
  
He sat upright. "Go where?"  
  
"Just a vacation," she placated. "I was thinking of going to Sedona. I miss it," she explained on a sigh.  
  
The corners of his mouth pulled into a straight line. "If you wait, I'll ask for leave and go with you."  
  
She stretched across the plateau of his desk and touched his arm. "You just got your job back," she reminded him. "What are the chances the Admiral is going to give you the time off?"  
  
"Slim to none," he admitted grudgingly. "Mac, I don't like this."  
  
Oak Creek ribboned through the sand, washing away tiny grains of the canyon floor, deepening the chasm. She concentrated on the way the water washed over the rocks, the way the fish slid downstream in its current. "I think I need to go."  
  
"Are you coming back?" he asked warily. His hand closed over hers, tugging slightly, pulling her closer to the front of his desk.  
  
"Of course," she answered immediately. "How long will you be gone?"  
  
He shrugged. "The JAG on board had a family emergency. I'm just filling in."  
  
"I'll be back before you then," she said. "Besides, I have a job interview next week."  
  
"Really?" He tightened his grip on her hand, loosening it slightly when she grimaced under its pressure.  
  
"A family law firm. It's mostly matrimonial work, but one of their attorneys worked on VAWA. And they want to expand their adoption department to handle foreign adoptions." She turned her hand over and curled her fingers against his palm. "You buy me lunch to celebrate the interview, I'll buy dinner when I get the job."  
  
"Deal." He stood up and walked over to her. Crooking his arm, he held his elbow out to her. As she slipped her hand around it, he frowned. "Where's your jacket?"  
  
"In the car," she sighed. At this time of year, the trees in the canyon would be a deep golden color. She sighed again and patted his arm. Rising onto her toes, she placed a light kiss on his cheek.  
  
"What was that for?" His eyes were wide.  
  
"Because you care," she explained.  
  
"I always did, you know."  
  
"Yeah," she said softly, patting his arm and smiling a little. "I do now." In Arizona, it was still mid-morning and the canyon walls glowed in the strong light. 


	16. Chapter 16

"I thought you said you beat me back to D.C.?" he asked. He flipped thought the mail, weeding out circulars and junk mail from the rapidly growing collection of bills.   
  
"I thought you would be gone longer," she protested.  
  
"Apparently, it wasn't as big of an emergency as we were all lead to believe," he snorted in disgust. "Most of my time was spent in transit."  
  
"I'm sorry," her voice drifted through the speakerphone.  
  
"When are you coming back?" he asked.  
  
"I - I," her voice faltered. "My interview was re-scheduled. I got a different flight back."  
  
His hands hovered above his mail and lowered to the countertop. He held his breath and counted to ten.  
  
"It's so beautiful here." She changed the subject quickly. "I forgot how much I loved it out here. You should see it one day, Harm. You'd love it."  
  
He counted to ten again. "Are you coming back here?" he asked softly.  
  
The conversation grew quiet. He could hear her carefully measured breaths, the soft inhalations and shaky releases. "Are you coming back?" he repeated.  
  
"Yes," she said softly. It sounded more like a question than an answer.  
  
"Mac," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I can't chase after you and bring you back."  
  
"I know. I don't want you to," she said quietly.  
  
"I just can't keep doing it," he persisted.  
  
"I'll come back," she promised.  
  
"If you're happy and you want to stay, then stay. But I can't keep running after you."  
  
"Harm," she broke in, "I'm going to come back."  
  
"Alright," he agreed. His hand hovered above the 'end' button, knowing that she would begin to make her excuses and leave the conversation.  
  
"But now I have to go," she said. "I'll call you later, okay?"  
  
"Okay," he agreed, sighing at how the conversation had deteriorated. "Bye," he added, but she was already gone.  
  
***  
  
The breeze caught and pulled at her exhalation, stretching it into a sigh that drifted into the canyon. She wrapped her arms around her thighs, tucking her forearms between her bent legs. The wind pulled strands of hair from her ponytail and whipped them across her face.  
  
It would be so easy to stay here. She could stay cradled in the canyon's walls. She could use them to build a fortress from her problems, to lock herself up in them and never leave. It was far from D.C., far from her troubles. They couldn't reach her here; they were locked up in the neutral walls of the tiny apartment where she had tried to kill herself.  
  
Destruction was slower here. It came in deep, slow breaths of wind, in the soft gurgle of the creek. It was a constant, wearing at the rocks and soil, tearing at he sand. But it would be so easy to ignore it and try to settle down.  
  
She shook her hair back, turning her face into the wind. She had been lying to him when she talked to him earlier. Lying by omission, but still lying. She had thought about staying. Since the moment she'd steered her rental car in the direction of Sedona, she'd thought about staying. Not staying, she admitted, so much as hiding.  
  
So, here she was. Did she stay, try to plant roots in the rocky soil and wear slowly away, like the canyon walls? Or did she let the wind pull her East?  
  
She didn't want to go back almost as much as she was homesick. She missed her friends. She missed him. When he called, she wanted to beg him to come out. But she couldn't ask it anymore than he could do it. She wanted him to see it though. She wanted him to see that there were bright spots in her past; even at the worst times, she had had good things.  
  
He was disappointed in her, she could hear it in his voice. The tired, slightly angry tones said just as much as he didn't say. He was convinced she was going to run and he'd had enough of the chase.  
  
Well, so had she. They spent so much time getting ready to run, whether to chase or be chased, that it was no wonder they were exhausted. It was a miracle they could recognize each other's faces, they spend so much time looking at the backs of their heads. She wanted to be able to face him. She wanted to tell him that she loved him. But she was afraid of him. Afraid that he was her last chance at that stupid fairy tale ending. If she never told him, if he never knew, then nothing could ruin it. She would never have to be unhappy, because she would never be completely happy.  
  
She tugged on the bottom of her jeans, ripping a string on one of the cuffs. Wrapping the string around her finger, she watched the canyon floor. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and waited. She waited for something to prompt her along. For someone to make her move. It amazed her how tired she was. Until she'd been able to sit still, she hadn't realized how far she'd run. She'd had enough of running away. It was time to stop. It was time to go home. 


	17. Chapter 17

The country was reduced to two colors: black and a glowing, creeping orange that clumped and oozed into the darkness. It was hard to imagine that, during the day, the tangle of lights and dark empty spaces were cities and fields. Night had homogenized the landscape, had made it unrecognizable from her plane.  
  
They were circling Dulles. The plane had been turning lazy circles in the sky waiting for clearance to land. The woman next to her was chatting nervously, her fingers curled like claws on the armrest. Mac could see sweat on the woman's forehead and her face had somehow turned pink and pale at once.  
  
It surprised her how much she wanted the plane to land. And not only to get away from her seatmate. She couldn't wait to get home. All she wanted was her own bed and to call Harm. She'd called earlier to give him her flight information so he'd know when she would be back. He wasn't in, so she'd had to leave a message on his machine, and, now, she really wanted to talk to him. She just wanted to hear his voice, to know that he wasn't angry with her.  
  
"This is my first time to DC." The woman next to her broke her chain of thought.  
  
"Oh?" Mac raised an eyebrow and dragged her attention away from the window.  
  
"My daughter and her husband moved here a few months ago. He got transferred."  
  
"Oh?" Mac said again, because she really wasn't interested and because she couldn't think of a more original response.  
  
"They just had a baby." The woman released her grip on the armrest to rummage through her purse. Despite herself, Mac watched, fascinated, as a pile began to form on the woman's lap. Eyeglasses, a wallet, a ticket and boarding pass, receipts, and a checkbook were heaped on to the woman's legs until she found an envelope at the bottom of her purse. "Here it is." She waved the envelope triumphantly. "This is my grandson, Mark." She pointed to a baby swaddled in blue. "Isn't he adorable?"  
  
"He's very cute," Mac agreed, passing the picture back to the woman.  
  
"Do you have any kids?" A mechanical whir signaled the lowering landing gear and had the woman gripping the armrests again. "God," she confessed, abandoning her line of questioning, "I hate flying."  
  
"Really?" Mac questioned. "I guess I'm used to it."  
  
"I never would have gotten on a plane if it weren't for my daughter." She smiled. "I think I would have been content to never leave home. Or, at least not go any farther than a comfortable drive would take me. Say, you never said, why are you going to DC?"  
  
Mac smiled. "It's home."  
  
The concourse was busy and filled with people who weren't Mac. He watched, arms crossed over his chest, leaning against a wall, as people poured out of the terminal. The lines at security grew and ebbed. The flow of humans waxed and waned. And she was late.  
  
Rationally, he knew it wasn't her fault. Hell, she didn't even know he was waiting for her. But he was still annoyed. He was tired and frustrated after an awful day in court. The judge hadn't ruled in his favor once. Evidence damning his client, evidence that he had counted on being ruled inadmissible, was now admissible. There wasn't a hat or a rabbit large enough to save his client; all he could do was wait and appeal the verdict.  
  
Her message reminded him of when he was little and used to dive into a cold pool after a hot day playing with his friends. It was a shock. It was a relief. She had promised that she was coming back, but there was a part of him that hadn't believed her. A very large part of him.  
  
As much as he didn't want to admit, the time while she was gone had been good for him at first. He didn't have to plan his schedule with her in mind. He could go straight home after a long day without worrying that she would be hurt by his actions. He didn't feel the need to call her every five minutes.  
  
For the first time in months, he remembered what it felt like to be single. And for the first couple of days, it had felt good. And then it started to nag at him. Then he began to worry about whether or not she would stay away permanently. All the times when she had run or he had dodged her advances flashed in his mind. They played over and over again like a bad slideshow. As the reel of bloopers and missed chances grew longer, the more he began to wonder about her and whether, from then on, if he would have to fly to Arizona to see her.  
  
And then, as the worries swirled about him, sucking him into a cyclone of doubt and fear, her voice was on his answering machine. The message was short and to the point. It contained flight numbers and times and a quiet explanation about catching a cab because Harriet had dropped her off at the airport.  
  
The screens that listed the departures and arrivals flickered and changed as new flights took off and landed. Finally, he saw that the listing for Phoenix had changed. Her flight had arrived. He started to scan the crowd for dark heads.  
  
She nearly bobbled her carry on when she saw him waiting for her. She hadn't called him so that he would pick her up. But she was ridiculously glad to see him. She wanted to be a cliché. She wanted to run down the long hallway and throw her arms around him. "Hey," she called out as she approached him.  
  
"Hi." He pushed himself up off the wall. Leaning down, he kissed her cheek and grabbed her carry-on.  
  
"What are you doing here?"  
  
"Picking you up?" he questioned. "Mac, I thought you were more observant than this," he chided.  
  
She threaded her arm through his. "I'm glad you came." She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. "I wasn't looking forward to the cab ride," she teased. "Or the cab fare."  
  
"It wasn't a big deal." He nudged her in the direction of the baggage claim. "Are you hungry?"  
  
"You're asking me?" She pointed towards her breastbone.  
  
"Right." He shook his head. "I forgot who I was talking to."  
  
She leaned her head against his arm and sighed a little. He looked down at her and smiled. "Tired?"  
  
"No," she answered quietly. "Just happy to be back."  
  
"I thought you were happy in Arizona."  
  
Her shoulder bumped his arm as she shrugged. "I was. It was really beautiful. I'm just happy to be home." She added in a soft voice. "I missed you."  
  
He reached up to pat her hand. "I missed you, too."  
  
She tugged lightly on his elbow, pulling him to a stop. They stood in the middle of the airport. Activity eddied around them, hovering at the edges of their inactivity. She could hear a loud speaker paging someone. Carts beeped, announcing their presence. She pulled her hand back and twisted it in her other hand. "Harm, I," she stopped and bit her lower lip.  
  
"What?" His voice was tired. She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets to keep herself from smoothing away the lines on his forehead. "Are you moving to Arizona?"  
  
She gave into temptation and brushed a thumb over his forehead, her hand resting against the side of his face. "No," she said. "I'm staying." She stomped on the ground. Burying her face in her free hand, she mumbled, "God, this is embarrassing, but I need to tell you this."  
  
"What?" he repeated his question.  
  
She lowered her hands. "It's just . I'm going to sound like such an egomaniac. I swear," she muttered under her breath, "this went so much better in my head."  
  
"You practiced this in your head?" he asked amused.  
  
She huffed. "Yes."  
  
"Maybe I can make this easier on you," he suggested. "What was I doing when you practiced?"  
  
"You were shutting up and not making fun of me." She glared at him. "I love you," she blurted the words out.  
  
He opened his mouth and she put her fingers on his lips, covering them. "I'm almost ready to hear it back," she said. "But not yet."  
  
Pushing her hand away from his mouth, he asked, "Any idea when you will be?" He raised an eyebrow. "Is there a timeline?"  
  
She looked away from him, directing her gaze back to the terminal's long corridor. "Soon." She raised and lowered her shoulders. "Maybe in a month."  
  
"Mac," he drawled her name. "I was kidding about the timeline."  
  
"Well, I wasn't. Tell me in a month," she insisted.  
  
"So how about in the mean time?"  
  
"Give me a hug?"  
  
He pulled her into his arms and rested his head on top of hers. She leaned against his chest and smiled as she felt him kiss the top of her head. She might never be Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty and he would probably never be Prince Charming. But if this is how Dorothy felt when she returned to Kansas, then fairy tale endings were just unnecessary. She didn't need the birds to sing or the stars to twinkle brightly. She just needed him. 


	18. Chapter 18

Once upon a time, long ago and far away from Washington, D.C., a little girl sat under a dark sky watching the stars above her head and made a wish. Hundreds of miles away, a boy, older in years but not experience, faced west, as if staring hard enough could make a whole continent appear on the horizon, and wished. With backwards glances at the structures behind them, lit from within to ward off the night, the boy and girl wished for a concept, for something they were both too young to understand except in its simplest forms.   
  
The boy looked out at the dark ocean and asked for the family he once knew. The little girl wanted the family that she had always dreamed about. That night, after wishing and wishing, they would both go to bed, still hopeful that the stars had the power to bring them what they wanted. When they woke up the next morning and saw that everything was still the same, they would believe a little less, their hearts would be a little harder, and their dreams a little farther beyond their grasps.  
  
For years, they would repeat this ritual until time and age made them give it up. They gave up wishing, because it only ever brought disappointment. And then one day, they met. Only in fairy tales, in bedtime stories that parents tell their children to protect them from the monsters that could still be warded off by nightlights and hope, would the boy and the girl, now a man and a woman, fall in love immediately. Only in fairy tales would they be able to fix each other quickly and not add to their lists of disappointments.  
  
But this wasn't a fairy tale, it didn't resemble the bedtime stories parents murmured to sleepy children. And the man wasn't even allowed to tell the woman he loved her for another two weeks. It was frustrating because she hadn't set any rules for herself, only for him. When they hung up the phone at night, she whispered it as her good bye. She sneaked the words into their conversations and he wasn't allowed to say them back.  
  
Which was worse, he wanted to know, suspecting he loved her when it was against the rules, or knowing he loved her and not being allowed to tell her? The effect was the same; he was stymied and he hated it. He hated her time line and he hated that he was still a little angry with her.  
  
He was angry that she could have been so selfish. He didn't understand completely her reasons; he never would. But he understood that her pain had been too big for her to see around it, too big to see the alternatives. There were times when she grew silent and pulled away and he wanted to shake her. To tell her to open her eyes and see him standing in front of her.  
  
But it was getting better. As she got better, the anger diminished. It hadn't disappeared, but it had lessened. And he knew, just as he knew that he loved her, that when she let them say the words, the little spark of anger would be extinguished, gone in a little puff of smoke and a soft sizzle.   
  
On the night before Thanksgiving, a cold front slid down from the north on an icy wind and rain. She curled up on his couch, watching as he peeled sweet potatoes for tomorrow's dinner at Bud and Harriet's.  
  
"Why did you volunteer to make those again?" She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she crossed the apartment.  
  
"Because they're good for you," he said patiently. They'd had this conversation five or six times already.  
  
"But they're orange," Mac said predictably. She eased onto a stool and watched the peels fall into a small pile on the cutting board.  
  
He set the potato and peeler down and sighed. "You eat oranges and carrots," he pointed out.  
  
"That's different." She waved a hand in front of her, brushing aside his comment.  
  
"How?"  
  
She grinned sheepishly. "I - uh - I like them?"  
  
"You need to eat more vegetables," he said firmly, resisting the urge to tell her how ridiculous she was being.  
  
"I do," she protested. "You make me."  
  
He picked up the vegetable again. "It's only because I love you." The words slipped out of his mouth and hovered between them. His grip on the peeler tightened.  
  
"Huh," she said on a shaky sigh. "I was wondering how long it would take before you said it."  
  
He raised his head. "You told me I couldn't." The spark that had been smoldering flared. "What the-" He choked on the words. He wanted to ask why she had made him wait. If this was some sort of test he didn't know he was taking.  
  
She raised a hand quickly, thumbing away tears before gesturing for him to stop. "No, no." She shook her head. "For once, I know what you're going to say and I swear I wasn't."  
  
"You weren't what?"  
  
"Playing a game or testing you."  
  
"Then what was it?"  
  
She shook her head again and blinked. "I don't know. Honestly? I thought I needed the time." She blew out a breath and studied the ceiling. "I needed to like me again before I could believe you could. But mostly? I was scared."  
  
"Scared of what?"  
  
"You know," she insisted.  
  
"Of it all going badly?" At her nod, he said, "Me too."  
  
She rounded the island and wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning her forehead between his shoulder blades. "I'm glad you didn't stick to the time line."  
  
He patted her hands. "Me too," he repeated. Grabbing her forearm, he pulled her around until she stood in front of him. He cupped her face in his hands. "I do love you."  
  
"I love you, too." She sniffled, nodding a little to emphasize her words.  
  
He kissed her softly, moving a hand from her face to her neck.  
  
"Harm," she said quietly when they pulled back. Her hand curled lightly over his wrist to keep him close.  
  
"I know." He shushed her with his free hand.  
  
She pulled the hand away from her mouth. "This doesn't fix everything with me."  
  
"I know," he said. He wanted to ignore her statement, ignore the little hurt it caused, but he couldn't.  
  
"But it makes it a lot better," she smiled.  
  
He smiled back. "Good."  
  
Maybe, one day, years from now, on a night like this one, when their children asked for a bedtime story, they would read them the fairy tales they didn't believe in. Or, maybe, they would tell them about a little boy and a little girl who made wishes and hoped they would come true. And maybe, on that rainy night, they could tell their children they had. Those were just maybes and, for now, it was just the two of them. And outside, the wind swirled and shook the windowpanes. It whistled around the corners of the building. The rain formed icy puddles and the storm drains choked and gurgled with water and leaves, but, inside, it was warm and dry and that was all that mattered.  
  
~end~  
  
A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who stuck by this fic and kept reading. I really appreciate the time and comments from you. Thanks again! Soleil 


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